The Changing Timber Resource Situation 



Employment 



Forest industries 



Textiles 



556.8 



538.3 



Apparel 



Machinery 

 nonelectrical 



Food products | 



Electric electronic , 

 equipment 



511.5 



437.7 



425.2 



414.8 



Chemicals 







J 



Transportation 

 equipment 



327.7 



325.5 



Thousand employees 



Wages and salaries 



Forest industries 

 Textiles 

 Apparel 



Machinery 

 nonelectrical 



Food products 



Electric/electronic 

 equipment 



Chemicals 



Transportation 

 equipment 



6.5 



4.7 



8.3 



64 



7.6 



7.9 



7.1 



Billion dollars 



Figure 6 — Employment and wages and salaries in manufac- 

 turing in the South, by industry, 1982 



Although there are opportunities to greatly increase forest 

 productivity, there are now trends underway in the timber 

 resource that are a cause for concern. The most recent 

 surveys of forests conducted by the Forest Inventory and 

 Analysis research units in the South show that net annual 

 timber growth for softwoods and hardwoods, after rising for 

 decades, has begun to decline. 



There are four major causes of the decline in softwood 

 growth. One is the lack of adequate regeneration of pine 

 stands after harvest on lands in private ownerships other 

 than forest industry. The natural succession after harvest in 

 most of the pine stands is to mixed hardwoods and pine or 

 to hardwoods. Many of the other private owners have been 

 accepting whatever species nature provides. As a result, the 

 latest cycle of forest surveys shows a 30- to 50-percent 

 decline in the number of pine saplings on these ownerships. 

 This decline has been going on long enough to be reflected 

 in net annual growth. 



A second factor acting to reduce net annual softwood 

 growth is an increase in the volume of mortality and cull 

 trees. Over the last 10 years, for example, annual pine 

 mortality in the South has about doubled. Roughly 15 

 percent of the gross annual growth in pine is now lost to 

 mortality, compared to 9 percent 10 years ago. Much of 

 the increase in mortality can be attributed to outbreaks of 

 pine bark beetles. Part of the rise in mortality is attributable 

 to suppression of overtopped trees. Much of the rise in cull 

 tree volume is attributable to increasing stand age. 



The third important factor affecting net annual softwood 

 growth has been a drop in radial growth in the Piedmont and 

 mountain regions of Georgia, South Carolina, North 

 Carolina, and Virginia. In these areas, average annual radial 

 pine growth has been some 20 to 30 percent lower during 

 the last 10 years than in the preceding 10-year period. The 

 causes of the decline in radial growth have not been 

 determined. Changes in stand density and age, drought or 

 other weather factors, the depletion of fertilizers in old 

 fields that came back to pine, an increase in hardwood 

 competition, and atmospheric deposition are all possible 

 contributing factors. 



The fourth factor, which affects both hardwood and 

 softwood growth, has been the conversion of timberland to 

 cropland and pasture or urban and other nontimber uses. 

 Since the early 1960's, the area of timberland in the South 

 has declined from 197 million acres to 182 million. 

 Approximately one-third of the loss can be attributed to the 

 conversion of hardwood bottomlands to cropland, especially 



18 



