Closing the Back Door 



Earlier discussion has centered on the pri- 

 orities that enter, as it were, through the back 

 door. A review of some of the major efforts 

 now being made to avoid such weighting by 

 default will suggest a direction for the future. 

 Certain segments of the^agency are working to 

 get more complete and reliable data and infor- 

 mation on which to base decisions. The ac- 

 count of these projects presented here is only 

 representative; there are others currently 

 underway in other National Forest Regions, 

 and no implication is intended that other 

 similar efforts are not worthy of emphasis and 

 close scrutiny. 



The need for resource inventory work that 

 will describe and update timber and other re- 

 sources in relation to other factors has been 

 pointed out. Though still in the formative 

 stages and recognized as experimental, the 

 Plan for the timber inventory of the Sitgreaues 

 National Forest 82 illustrates the manner in 

 which the agency is trying to tackle its 

 complex problems. 



The objective of the inventory, as stated in 

 the plan, is to provide necessary information 

 for meaningful timber planning, including 

 data on the "capability of the land to grow 

 trees," in order to calculate effectively the 

 real contribution of various sectors of the 

 Forest toward sustained yield. This has not 

 been done adequately in the past. 



In this inventory, timber volume on those 

 areas of the Sitgreaves National Forest charac- 

 terized by unstable landforms, steep grades, 

 critical watersheds, or unproductive stony and 

 unfertile soil types will be taken out of the net 

 figure to be used in the calculations that help 

 to determine sustainable output and the al- 

 lowable cut. 



Further, the data gathered will be used to 

 evaluate various management alternatives so 

 as to determine the levels of timber output 

 associated with different levels of program 

 cost. This is the essential service that the eco- 

 nomics research personnel can perform — to 

 discover the alternative uses of the land and 



82 Jerry T. Goon, Leonard A. Lindquist, and 

 Thomas O. Farrenkopf, Intermountain Forest and 

 Range Experiment Station, 1971. 



then inform the public of the costs and bene- 

 fits associated with each possible use and pro- 

 gram. Although, theoretically, it would be de- 

 sirable to investigate the infinite possible lev- 

 els of management programs, this is not feasi- 

 ble. The Sitgreaves plan envisions the assess- 

 ment of a practical range of program levels of 

 development plans, insuring that analysis of 

 management alternatives at the margin is at 

 least approximated. A more recent inventory 

 plan, 83 just formalized, puts the case even 

 more clearly when it states, 



. . . the object of forest resource inventories is 

 to provide the basic information about forest 

 land and associated resources required to iden- 

 tify and evaluate alternatives of land use and 

 management. This must be done hi relation to 

 the overall goal .... [This plan] describes, as 

 far as possible, those variables that permit relat- 

 ing or linking timber growing to other use op- 

 portunities so that alternatives of timber grow- 

 ing can be considered in relation to alternatives 

 of land use. 



There are many practical problems to be 

 solved in the effort to achieve greater equal- 

 ity in data gathering among the various re- 

 sources. One obstacle is lack of manpower to 

 collect the kind of interrelated data called for. 

 Considering the types of information that 

 must be generated by a team of men in the 

 field even in a relatively simple timber inven- 

 tory plan, it is obvious that additional inputs 

 as to wildlife, range, etc., would become an 

 intolerable burden under existing limitations 

 of costs and training time. 



A solution to this problem is available, 

 however, and the Forest Service seems to be 

 moving rapidly toward it. Cooperation, pres- 

 ently along functional lines, is being sought in 

 the task of setting up criteria for the various 

 inventories, so that data can be interchanged. 

 In addition, efforts are being made toward 

 better coordination of data collection pro- 

 cedures. Such coordination is essential to de- 

 scription of use interrelationships. 



In terms of the FOREST goal, the appar- 

 ent optimum approach to inventory and data 

 collection is to incorporate the separate func- 

 tional areas into one comprehensive manage- 



83 USDA Forest Service, Plan for the timber inven- 

 tory of the Ashley National Forest, prepared by 

 Forest Survey Staff, Intermountain Forest and Range 

 Experiment Station, 1972. 



69 



