Friday, November 3, 2017

Some Mid-Atlantic Forest Stats

H/T Reddit user CaptainBrant, first seen here. This is the result of the PA forest survey. THIS is how you manage forest lands! The 2.4:1 growth to the removal ratio is great, and exactly as I thought I noticed since I was young, the forests are taller and thicker. Note that the only subtraction is from "removal", which you can get away with in Pennsylvania because there is very little lost to fire. Unlike California. Note, I've contacted three different organizations about trying to protect California's forests and not received a response.

Abstract: This report summarizes the third cycle of annualized inventory of Pennsylvania with field data collected from 2009 through 2014. Pennsylvania has 16.9 million acres of forest land dominated by sawtimber stands of oak/hickory and maple/beech/birch forest-type groups. Volumes continue to increase as the forests age with an average of 2,244 cubic feet per acre on timberland. Sawtimber volume has risen 24 percent in 10 years to 115 billion board feet. Net growth outpaced removals by a ratio of 2.4:1 on timberland. Additional information on land-use change, fragmentation, ownership, forest composition, structure and age distribution, carbon stocks, regeneration, invasive plants, insect pests, and wood products is also presented. Sets of supplemental tables are available online at https://doi.org/10.2737/NRS-RB-111 and contain: 1) tables that summarize quality assurance and 2) a core set of tabular estimates for a variety of forest resources.

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