28 



TIMBER RESOURCES FOR AMERICAS FUTURE 



Two classes of forest land are recognized, com- 

 mercial and noncommercial. Both are defined in 

 the appendix. In brief, commercial forest lands 

 are those on which reliance must be placed for 

 supplies of timber. These lands have other values 

 as well as timber production. Frequently these 

 other values such as water yield or recreational use 

 transcend the values of the land for timber pro- 

 duction. Noncommercial forest lands are those 

 which are either unavailable for, or incapable of, 

 growing commercial crops of timber. Except for 

 occasional brief references to noncommercial forest 

 land or the trees thereon, this report deals only 

 with commercial forest land and timber. 



Three- Fourths of Commercial 

 Land Is in the East 



Forest 



Of the 489 mUlion acres of commercial forest 

 land, it is significant that three-fourths is in the 

 East with the greatest concentrations in the South- 

 east, West Gulf, and Lake States Regions (fig. 11). 

 Such heavily industrialized and densely populated 

 regions as the Middle Atlantic, South Atlantic, and 

 Central Regions, each have about as much commer- 

 cial forest land as does the Pacific Northwest — the 

 region with the greatest commercial forest area in 

 the West (fig. 12 and table 15). 







NORTH 



WEST 



25% 



EAST 



75% 



WEST 



121.3 mil. -i-jA c\ 1 



174.0 mil. acres 



193.3 mil. acres 



SOUTH 











west includes Coastal Alaska 



Figure 11 



