Recommendations 



If any overall criticism of past practice is in 

 order it is that the effort going into the develop- 

 ment of coordinated plans for the management 

 of National Forests has been inadequate. The 

 major problem is lack of basic planning infor- 

 mation, much of which is costly to obtain. 



It could be said in short that the problem is 

 inadequate financing for basic data collection, 

 analysis, and planning. The problem is more 

 than one of financing for timber inventories. 

 The timber resource cannot be described mean- 

 ingfully unless it can be described within the 

 context of the land, ecology, and land use situa- 

 tion. Thus, there must be balanced financing 

 for soils-hydrologic surveys, ecological habitat 

 surveys, and resource inventories. 



The data presented indicate that when there 

 is an absence of adequate information about 

 the land and ecology and there is also 

 inadequate multiple use land management 

 planning, then the tendency is to overestimate 

 the timber growing base area. This in turn 

 results in a temporary inflation of timber cut- 

 ting levels. Far more serious, however, is the 

 fact that to include forest land in the timber 

 growing base that will not, or probably will not, 

 be used for the production of industrial wood is 

 to imply the timber growing base is larger than 

 it really is and the need for management effort 

 is to that degree being falsely discounted. 



The six Forest Service Regions have been 

 quick to recognize the implications of the 

 study findings and many of them have already 

 moved rapidly to correct deficiencies in past 

 procedures. In general the effort has been to 

 relate the timber inventory classification to im- 

 proved multiple use plans. This has required 

 accelerating soils-hydrologic surveys to provide 

 land stability information in advance of timber 

 inventories. In addition, where forest land man- 

 agement activities are influenced by physiog- 

 raphy, ecology, accessibility, or use objec- 



tives, maps are being prepared to permit classi- 

 fying the timber inventory data accordingly. 



There is a premium on "in-place" informa- 

 tion for National Forest planning. Unless map- 

 ping is used, it is impossible to relate sample 

 plot information about the timber-to-land 

 capability, land use plans, and other pertinent 

 characteristics that are area related. 



The Forest Survey Research Units in the 

 West are now cooperating with National Forest 

 System Timber Inventory staffs in designing 

 timber inventories that relate the timber "in- 

 place" to the land, habitat, and land use situa- 

 tions and provide more "in-place" information 

 on the timber itself. The timber inventories 

 now being designed and planned vary in detail 

 from Region to Region, depending on the indi- 

 vidual Region's timber data situation and data 

 handling capabilities. Although changes and 

 improvements are already underway, it is still 

 appropriate to observe that thoroughly mean- 

 ingful timber inventories require progress along 

 the following lines : 



• Multiple Use Planning Must Be 

 Improved 



The principal conclusion of the In- 

 termountain Station and the coopera- 

 ting Regions and Forests is that the 

 taproot of the problem of forest land 

 stratification is in multiple use plan- 

 ning. Functional plans can be no better 

 than the multiple use plans to which 

 they are related. Multiple use plans 

 must reveal the land use situation ac- 

 curately and completely. 



To be complete, the multiple use 

 plan must give specific details about the 

 nature of the management planned on 

 the land available for timber grov^ng 

 on a modified basis only so that the im- 

 pact of the modifications on expected 

 yields can be determined (fig. 9). 



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