A Coordinated Approach Is Required 

 To Build an Adequate Data Base for 

 Forest Land Management Planning 



Timber inventories should not be 

 undertaken without making full use of 

 the information required to relate the 

 timber to the land and land use situa- 

 tion. In other words, there must be 

 closer coordination of timber inven- 

 tory with soil-hydrologic surveys and 

 studies, ecologic surveys, and multiple 

 use planning. 



Increased Funding for Surveys and Re- 

 source Invento ries Is Esse n tia I 



Substantial increases in funding will 

 be required in the future for the collec- 

 tion and development of planning in- 

 formation. The more intensive the 

 management, the more intensive must 

 be the effort to develop planning infor- 

 mation. Demand for forest land for all 

 uses has increased in recent years, re- 

 quiring that the National Forests be 

 managed more intensively. However, 

 work in the area of basic data collection 

 and information development for plan- 

 ning have not kept pace with the need. 

 Research Effort in Forest Management 

 Planning and Inventory Techniques 

 Should Be Increased 



More data collection will not by it- 

 self produce a solution to forest land 

 management problems. Although a sig- 

 nificant part of the problem is lack of 

 data, a major difficulty is the need to 

 make more effective use of the data 

 collected for management planning. 

 There is a need, also, to improve data 

 collection techniques both to achieve 

 increased efficiency and to decrease 

 data collection costs. 

 Timber Inventory Planning Must Be 

 Improved 



The failure of timber resource statis- 

 tics to serve the information needs of 

 National Forest planning as well as they 

 should is partly the fault of overpreoc- 

 cupation with certain standard data re- 

 quired for national statistics. The pre- 



occupation with responsibility for 

 standard statistics for Washington Of- 

 fice use has diverted attention from the 

 dynamic and more detailed informa- 

 tional needs of individual National For- 

 ests for planning purposes. 



A prerequisite for an adequate in- 

 ventory of the timber resources of any 

 National Forest, therefore, is a care- 

 fully prepared plan that identifies the 

 objectives of the planning effort, lays 

 out the analyses required, specifies the 

 data needed to accomplish these 

 analyses, and describes how the data 

 are to be collected. 

 • A MORE DETAILED STRATIFICA- 

 TION OF FOREST LAND IS 

 NEEDED FOR PLANNING 



Experience of managers and man- 

 agement planners indicates that a sim- 

 ple "commercial-noncommercial" divi- 

 sion of forest land is too general and 

 not adequate to meet National Forest 

 planning needs even at the national 

 level. Neither is it adequate to divide 

 forest land only on the basis of quality 

 or yield-capability classes. Other land 

 characteristics such as steepness of 

 slope, land stability, access, kind of 

 soil, and ecologic or habitat type can 

 have a very significant effect on the 

 cost and opportunity for using the land 

 for timber growing. In addition, the 

 amount and condition of the timber oc- 

 cupying a given area can be a major fac- 

 tor limiting the opportunity for usage. 

 In other words, it is essential to de- 

 scribe the forest land in terms of all the 

 factors that affect its use for timber 

 production and to describe the timber 

 in relation to the land. Furthermore, it 

 is necessary to develop a classification 

 of the timber growing base area that 

 reflects degree of management need 

 and opportunity. It will, however, be 

 impossible to do this without first get- 

 ting agreement throughout the Forest 

 Service on the planning and analysis 

 models to be used. 



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