The Southern Forest
According to the Southern Forest Resource Assessment (Wear and Greis 2002), the Southern United States consists of more than 214 million acres of forest land. Approximately 13 million of these acres are classified as "reserved and other forest land," leaving 201 million acres in productive forest land. This number has remained relatively constant since the 1970s. Forest cover is depicted in green in the graphic of the United States, to the left. Timberland, defined as land capable of producing a commercial timber crop, makes up 93% of the Souths forest land. Over the past 20 years, increases in timberland, primarily from conversion of agriculture to timber, have occurred in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Kentucky. Southern states losing timberland include Florida and Louisiana.
Forested acres for each state in 1982 and 1999 are presented in the graphic to the right.
Landowners controlling timberland in the South include a diverse group of nonindustrial private forest landowners, forest industry, government, and other public agencies. Government lands are classed as national forest and other public lands (Wear and Greis 2002). Other public lands include land administered by Native Americans, other federal agencies, state, county, and municipal agencies. Nonindustrial private forest landowners include corporations (not manufacturing wood products) and private individual owners. A recent addition to the nonindustrial forest landowner class includes timber investment management organizations (TIMOs). These organizations include banks, agribusiness, real estate investment and development firms, and insurance companies. TIMOs typicaly do not own timberland, but rather manage it for private landowners and investors. Forest industry land accounts for the most readily available source of raw material for the forest products industry.
According to the Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) data, nonindustrial private individuals own 69% of the timberland in the South. Twenty percent of forest land is owned by forest industry. Approximately 11% is held as public timberland (at right). The public land is divided between 6% national forest and 5% other public lands. While each state differs in actual percentages, it is evident that most forest land is privately held.
Trends in the number of forest landowners indicate a 12% increase in landowners from 1978 to 1993. In 1993, there were 4.9 million forest landowners and a majority owned tracts smaller than 50 acres. Subsequently, there are more landowners owning smaller parcels of land in the South (Wear and Greis 2002).
The following sections describe the vast renewable resources that comprise the southern forest. Topics include:
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