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 present efforts at post-war planning. This economic survey of an integral 

 part of the Nation's reservoir of raw material- — our forests — and of the industries dependent 

 upon them is essential to a complete understanding of resource potentialities. The data presented 

 result from the first Nation-wide field inventory ever to be made of the volume, quality, and species 

 of the timber resource, undertaken primarily as an essential contribution to the national, social, and 

 economic welfare in peacetime. The rapidly changing conditions of our economic and social life 

 since the second World War began have accentuated the need for publishing the facts already gathered 

 and the conclusions to be drawn from them. 



The Nation-wide Forest Survey, authorized by the McSweeney-McNary Forest Research Act 

 of May 22, 1928, is obtaining facts basic to a system of planned forest-land management and use for 

 each of the States and forest regions, and for the Nation; and through analysis of these data 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 sup- 

 ply 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 inter- 

 pret and correlate these findings with existing and anticipated economic conditions, as an aid in the 

 formulation 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 the 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 condi- 

 tions. Any that are out of line with war requirements are obviously in abeyance for the present. 



The survey is conducted in the various forest regions by the forest experiment stations of the 

 Forest Service; in the South by the Southern Forest Experiment Station with headquarters in New 

 Orleans, La. 



Raymond D. Garver, 



Director, Forest Survey. 



