The Forest Survey 



DEPENDABLE information on the supply of all raw materials is vital to the conduct of the 

 war and to the success of present efforts at post-war planning. This economic survey of an 

 integral part of the Nation's reservoir of raw material — our forests — and of the industries 

 dependent upon them, is essential to a complete understanding of resource potentialities. The 

 data presented result from the first Nation-wide held inventory ever to be made of the volume, 

 quality, and species of the timber resource, undertaken primarily as an essential contribution to the na- 

 tional social and economic welfare in peacetime. The rapidly changing conditions of our economic 

 and social life since the second world war began have not lessened the need for publishino; the facts 

 already gathered and the conclusions to be drawn from them. 



The Nation-wide Forest Survey, authorized by the McSweeney-McNary Forest Research Act 

 of May 22, 1928, has undertaken the task of obtaining facts essential to a system of planned forest- 

 land management and use for each of the States and forest regions, and for the Nation, and through 

 analysis thereof is aiding in the formulation of guiding principles and policies fundamental to perma- 

 nent forest-land use. 



The fivefold purpose of the Forest Survey is: (1) To make a field inventory of the present supply 

 of timber and other forest products; (2) to ascertain the rate at which this supply is being increased 

 through growth; (3) to determine the rate at which it is being diminished through industrial and 

 domestic uses, windfall, fire, disease, and other causes; (4) to determine the present consumption and 

 the probable future trend in requirements for timber and other forest products; and (5) to interpret 

 and correlate these findings with existing and anticipated economic conditions, as an aid in the formu- 

 lation of both private and public policies for the eH^ective and rational use of land suitable for forest 

 production. 



The plan has been to publish the results of this investigation as they become available. Neces- 

 sarily, the data presented apply to large areas and should not be interpreted as portraying correctly 

 the forest situation for small sections, the condition of which may be either better or poorer than the 

 average for the entire unit or State. They supply the general background for the intensive study 

 of critical situations. As might be expected, the recommendations included in these reports are 

 adapted to the long-time character of timber growing and presuppose normal peacetime conditions. 

 Any that are out of line with war requirements are obviously in abeyance for the present. 



This investigation is conducted in the various forest regions by the forest experiment stations 

 of the Forest Service and in Idaho by the Northern Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment 

 Station with headquarters in Missoula, Mont. 



Raymond D. Garver, 



Director, Forest Survey. 



