Excerpt
MUCH of the future supply of softwood timber in the southern United States depends upon the forest management decisions made by non-industrial private landowners. These landowners, who control about 55 million acres of pineland, or 71 percent of the commercial forestland in the southern United States, face critical decisions about reforestation on their land after harvest.
To assure a fully stocked pine stand, a landowner generally must undertake some site preparation and reforestation activity. Many pine stands in the South have an understory of hardwood. When the pine canopy is broken by harvesting timber, hardwoods respond vigorously to the added light and space. As a rule, harvested pine stands require such treatments as burning, application of herbicides, chopping, and planting to ensure an adequate stocking of pine. Cutting without follow-up regeneration measures often results in an understocked pine stand or a low-value hardwood stand.
In the last two decades, few of the 1.5 million acres of pineland harvested annually in the South by nonindustrial private owners have been adequately reforested with pine. The deficiency of pine regeneration was first documented in …
Footnotes
H. F. Kaiser is an economist with the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. 20250. J. P. Royer is an assistant professor in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27706.
- Copyright 1983 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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