PRODUCTIVITY OF RECE>rTLY CUT LAIsTDS 



237 



volumes of high-quality wood aro produced. 

 An additional period of years could have been 

 added arbitrarily to felling age standards to 

 make some allowance for quality growth. 

 Productivity indexes thus would have been 

 lower, particularly in the East where pre- 

 mature cutting is much more prevalent than 

 in the West. However, this was not done 

 because of lack of any specific guide lines for 

 such arbitrary adjustment. 



3. Effect of felling age was judged on basis 

 of size class of product cut. On the 

 grounds of a greater relative national need 

 for large size than small size products, effect 

 of felling age could have been appraised 

 against the ages at which growth of saw- 

 timber reaches a maximum. This, too, would 

 have resulted in lower indexes, again prima- 

 rily in the East. However, because both 

 large and small products are needed in the 

 U. S. economy, and because no basis existed 

 for allocating proportions of small vs. large 

 products objectives to a specific area of land, 

 final decision was to appraise effect of felling 

 age on productivity for the size class of 

 products cut. 



4. The standard for compositioti could have 

 been based upon a higher proportion of 

 desirable species than the 50 percent chosen. 

 Some reviewers recommended a standard 

 higher than this. 



5. Standards both for existing and prospective 

 stocking were frequently exceeded on owner- 

 ships operated under effective forestry pol- 

 icies. Whether stocking standards are too 

 high or too low was vigorously debated 

 during planning stages. Because these 

 standards were occasionally exceeded during 

 the survey — frequently on properties under 

 forest management — actual experience during 

 the survey lends little support to the idea 

 that standards are too high as an expression 

 of the stocking reasonably attainable under 

 current operating conditions. 



6. The use of only 3 broad classes to express 

 results of tlie survey tends to obscure im- 

 portant relations between productivity of 

 recently cut lands and such important factors 

 as size class and type of ownership, geo- 

 graphic location, forest type group and 

 others. The use of a greater number of 

 classes would have provided the basis for 

 more precise and informative comparisons. 



MAJOR NATIONAL CONTRASTS 



The tables and charts which provide background 

 for the discussion and analysis of results in the 

 following pages are summaries of more detailed 

 statistics found in the appendix section Basic 

 Statistics. Of these statistics, tables 22 and 23 

 on forest ownership and tables 70-77 on produc- 

 tivity of recently cut lands are the major refer- 

 ences. These basic tables were developed in con- 

 siderable detail so that others might derive 

 summaries of particular interest to them. In 

 some tables, the detail exceeds that contemplated 

 by the sampling standards so that sampling erroi;s 

 are high. Readers consulting the appendix 

 tables or making separate summaries from them 

 can determine the statistical reliability of esti- 

 mates by application of procedures outlined in 

 the appendix section Adequacy of Data. 



Public and Private Lands Compared 



Nationally, 56 percent of the recently cut lands 

 in private ownerships were found to have reached 

 from 70 to 100 percent of the standards attainable 

 under current operating conditions; that is, a 

 little more than half of such lands were found to 

 qualify for the upper productivity class. In 

 contrast, 80 percent of the recently cut lands in 

 public ownership were found to be in the upper 

 productivity class (table 136). 



The importance of this contrast is apparent 

 from the proportion of total commercial forest 

 area in each of these two ownership categories. 

 Table 136 shows that 358 million acres or 73 

 percent of all commercial forest land is privately 

 owned. The remaining 27 percent is in various 

 types of Federal, State, and local public ownership. 



Increases in the national level of growth needed 

 to meet the wood requirements of our growing 

 population and expanding economy must come, 

 for the most part, from, the large area of private 

 lands. The condition of recently cut private lands 

 falls considerably short of meeting standards 

 attainable under current operating conditions. 

 Because of this and the large area involved, the 

 possibilities of raising the national growth level 

 are much greater on private than on public lands. 



Small Private Holdings 

 A Major Problem 



Productivity of recently cut areas on private 

 lands is directly related to the size class of owner- 

 ship — the smaller the ownership, the lower the 



