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 current and future efforts at post-war planning. This economic survey of 

 our forests which are an inteoral part of the Nation's reservoir oi raw material is essential to a 

 complete understanding of resource potentialities and of the industries depending on them. The data 

 presented result from the first Nation-wide field inventory ever to be made of our iorest land and the 

 volume, quality, growth, and species of the timber resource. Although undertaken initially as an 

 essential contribution to national, social, and economic welfare in peacetime, it is proving no less a 

 necessity in wartime. 



The rapidly changing conditions of our economic and social life since the Second World War 

 began have not lessened the need for publishing the facts already gathered and the conclusions to be 

 drawn from them. Other values of forest land, such as grazing and watershed protection, are not 

 covered by this study. 



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 analy_ 

 sis thereof is aiding in the formulation of guiding principles and policies, fundamental to permanent 

 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 for- 

 mulation of both private and public policies for the effective 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 here presented apply to large areas and should not be interpreted as portraying cor- 

 rectly the forest situation for small sections, the conditions of which may be either better or poorer 

 than the average for the entire unit or State. They supply the general background for an 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 North Carolina by the Appalachian Forest Experiment Station with head- 

 quarters in Asheville, N. C. 



Raymond D. Garver, 



Director Forest Survey. 



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