reduce fire hazards and improve the economic feasi- 

 bility of intensive silviculture. However, there could 

 be serious environmental and economic problems 

 associated with large-scale developments such as 

 steam-electric utility plants. 2' One potential result 

 could be increasing competition for residuals cur- 

 rently used in manufacture of woodpulp and particle- 

 board. Another possibility is esthetic and physical 

 deterioration of forest sites. This problem may 

 become a social issue, particularly in areas where 

 timber harvesting has been unobtrusive heretofore. It 

 appears likely, therefore, that the potential impacts of 

 major fuelwood-consuming installations will have to 

 be evaluated carefully. And, the costs of delivering a 

 sustained, long-term wood supply to expensive instal- 

 lations requiring hundreds of thousands of tons of 

 fuel must be weighed with equal care — case-by-case. 



Projected Demand for Timber 



The projections of demand for timber products pre- 

 sented above have been in standard units of measure, 

 that is, board feet of lumber, square feet of plywood, 

 cords of pulpwood and fuelwood, and cubic feet of 

 other industrial roundwood products. In order to 

 compare demand for these products with projections 

 of timber supplies, these projections must be con- 

 verted to common units of measure — cubic feet of 

 roundwood and board feet of sawtimber. 



Improvements in utilization. — An important fac- 

 tor in converting demands for timber products to 

 roundwood is prospective change in utilization prac- 

 tices. In recent decades, in response to rising stump- 

 age costs, there have been substantial improvements 

 in utilizing the timber harvested from forests. Im- 

 provements have involved an increasing use of slabs, 

 edgings, sawdust, veneer cores, shavings, and other 

 similar material for pulp and particleboard. Various 

 technological developments such as thinner saws and 

 automatic patching and stitching in veneer mills have 

 led to increased product yield per unit of wood input, 

 although in the lumber industry this apparently has 

 been offset by the use of smaller and lower quality 

 material and the spreading use of low-yield (lumber) 

 equipment such as chipping headrigs. Yields in the 

 pulp industry have been held down by a large rise in 

 the production of bleached and semi-bleached pulps 

 which require more wood per ton of production. 



With respect to the future, it has been assumed that 

 there would be significant increases in timber product 

 yields over the projection period. These increases 



under base level price trend assumptions average 

 about 10 percent for lumber, plywood, ^^ and wood- 

 pulp. These percentages would, of course, be larger 

 under the equilibrium (higher) price trend assump- 

 tions discussed below. The opportunities for further 

 improvement are discussed later. 



Projected demands for roundwood. — In 1977, 

 U.S. consumption of timber products in terms of 

 roundwood volume was 13.7 billion cubic feet, 

 slightly below the high of 13.8 billion cubic feet 

 reached in 1973, but significantly above the levels of 

 the 1950's and early 1960's when consumption was 

 generally below 12 billion cubic feet a year. 



Increases in projected roundwood demands are 

 substantial over the projection period (tables 6.5 and 

 6.6). For example, the medium projection of demand 

 under base level price trends reaches 22.7 billion 

 cubic feet in 2000, with a continuing rise to 28.3 bil- 

 lion cubic feet in 2030, more than double consump- 

 tion in 1976 and 1977. Much of the projected increase 

 in demand is for pulp products; consequently pulp- 

 wood accounts for about 45 percent of the total 

 demand for roundwood in 2030, compared with a 

 third in 1976. 



Growth in roundwood consumption in the 1960's 

 and 1970's consisted entirely of timber produced from 

 softwood species. Consumption of hardwood round- 

 wood has remained at about the same level since the 

 late 1950's. 



Projections show rather large increases for both 

 softwoods and hardwoods. Assuming base level price 

 trends, the medium projection of demand for soft- 

 woods is up 82 percent by 2030 — from 10.3 in 1976 

 to 18.7 billion cubic feet. Demand for hardwoods is 

 projected to more than triple, rising from 3.0 to 9.6 

 billion cubic feet. The faster rate of growth for hard- 

 woods largely reflects the projected rise in demand 

 for hardwood roundwood for pulp products, hard- 

 wood lumber for pallets and railroad ties, and hard- 

 wood plywood and veneer for furniture manufacture. 



Demand for sawtimber products. — About three- 

 fourths of the roundwood consumed in 1976 came 

 from the sawlog portion of sawtimber-size trees. 

 Trends in consumption of sawtimber have been sim- 

 ilar to the trends for roundwood (tables 6.5 and 6.6). 

 The projections show continuation of this similarity. 

 By 2030, projected medium demands with base level 

 price trends total about 78.6 billion board feet for 

 softwoods and 30.9 biUion board feet for hardwoods. 



21 Decker, H. V. Wood energy, just a word of caution. Guest 

 editorial in the Northern Logger. March. 1979. 



22 It was assumed that yields of lumber and plywood would 

 increase 10 percent in each of the geographic regions used in this 

 report (see frontispiece). Because of differences in the average 

 yields in each region and projected shifts in output among regions, 

 the national average increase in yield is somewhat below 10 

 percent. 



210 



