Year: 1988
Type: report
Abstract: One hundred seventy-one million tons, or 60 percent of the net green weight of all live trees, is in growing-stock material.Of the remaining 1 1 5 million tons of all-live-tree weight, 53 percent is in growing-stock tops, 18 percent is in saplings, and 19 percent is in the bole of cull trees.* An additional 7.6 million tons of biomass is contained in salvable dead trees.precision of each estimate is described by its sampling error.Sampling errors are given with several tables in this report.The others are avail- able upon request.Briefly, here is an example of how the sampling error is used to indicate reliability: The estimate of timberland for Massachusetts is 2,929,400 acres.Its sampling error is 1 .4percent, or 41 ,000 acres.This means that if there are no errors in the procedure and we repeated the inventory in the same way, the odds are 2 to 1 (66 percent proba- bility) that the estimate would be between 2,888,400 and 2,970,400 acres (2,929,400 +/- 41,000).Similarly, the odds are 19 to 1 (95 percent probability) that the estimate would be within +/-82,000 acres.It is worth noting that the state estimates have the smallest sampling errors and therefore are the most precise or reliable.County estimates are less reliable.In Massachusetts for example, the sampling error for the state area tables is 1.4 percent; while the sampling error for Essex County is 1 1 .7 percent.Thus, county level estimates are often considerably less reliable than state level estimates.In general, as the size of the estimate decreases in relation to the total, the sampling error, ex- pressed as a percentage of the estimate, increases. Comparison Between InventoriesTo evaluate the condition of the forest resource, it is useful to compare the current estimates with those from the previous inventory.However, for the comparisons to be valid, the procedures used in the two inventories must be similar.As a result of our ongoing efforts to improve the efficiency of the inventory, we have made several changes in procedures and definitions since 1972.Because these changes make the direct comparison of the 1 985 estimates with those published by Peters and Bowers (1 977) inappropriate, data collected in 1 972 have been reprocessed using the 1985 procedures and standards.Seven state-level tables containing the recalculated 1 972 data have been included in this report.The tables provide area and volume data for compari-son and trend analysis.They are printed in italic type to distinguish them from the current tables.nesting site or temporary refuge by many species of wildlife.Coarse residues.Manufacturing residues suitable for chipping, such as slabs, edgings, and veneer cores.Commercial species.Tree species presently or prospectively suitable for industrial wood products.Excludes species of typically small size, poor form, or inferior quality, such as hawthorn or sumac.Condition class.Classification of trees based on live or dead and condition of top of the tree (i.e.intact, broken, dead).Cord.See Standard cord.County and municipal lands.Lands owned by counties and local public agencies or municipalities or leased to them for 50 years or more.Cropland.Land that currently supports agricultural crops including silage and feed grains, bare farm fields resulting from cultivation or harvest, and maintained orchards.Cubic-foot stand-volume class.A classification of forest land in terms of net cubic-foot volume of all live trees per acre.Cull tree.A rough tree or a rotten tree.Cull increment.The net volume of growing-stock trees on the previous inventory that became rough or rotten trees in the current inventory, divided by the number of growing seasons between surveys.Cultural land.Land with human development as the major land cover; includes industrial, commercial, and residential land uses.Diameter at breast height (d.b.h.).The diameter outside bark of a standing tree measured at 4-1/2 feet above the ground.Farmer-owned lands.Lands owned by farm operators, whether part of the farmstead or not.Ex- cludes land leased by farm operators from non- farm owners.Federal lands.Lands (other than National Forests) administered by Federal agencies.Fine residues.Manufacturing residues not suit- able for chipping, such as sawdust and shavings.Forest industry lands.Lands owned by companies or individuals that operate primary woodusing plants.Forest land.Land that is at least 10 percent stocked with trees of any size, or that formerly had such tree cover and is not currently developed for a nonforest use.The minimum area for classification of forest land is 1 acre.Forest type.A classification of forest land based on the species that form a plurality of live tree basal area stocking.Forest-type group.A combination of forest types that share closely associated species or site re- quirements.The many forest types in Mas- sachusetts were combined into the following major forest-type groups (the descriptions apply to forests in Massachusetts): a. White/red pine-forests in which white pine, hemlock, or red pine make up the plurality of the stocking, singly or in combination; common associates include sugar maple, red maple, red spruce, balsam fir, and paper birch.b.Spruce/fir~1orests in which red spruce, northern white-cedar, balsam fir, white spruce, black spruce, or tamarack, singly or in combination, make up a plurality of the stocking; common associates include paper birch, red maple, aspen, white pine, hemlock, and sugar maple.c.Hard p/ne-forests in which eastern red- cedar or pitch pine, singly or in combination, make up a plurality of the stocking; common associates include oaks, gray birch, red maple, and blackgum.d.Oa/c/p/ne-forests in which northern red oak or white ash, singly or in combination, make up a plurality of the stocking but where white pine contributes 25 to 50 percent of the 25 percent of the stocking; common associates include white pine, paper birch, red spruce, beech, hemlock, sugar maple, and red maple.f.Elm/ash/red map/e~forests in which black ash, elm, red maple (when growing on wet sites), willow, or green ash, singly or in combination, make up a plurality of the stocking;common associates include balsam fir, red maple, aspen, and white ash.g.Northern hardwoods-forests in which sugar maple, beech, yellow birch, red maple (when associated with northern hardwoods), pin cherry, or black cherry, singly or in combination, make up a plurality of the stocking; common associates include balsam fir, red spruce, paper birch, hemlock, white ash, aspen, and basswood.h.Aspen/birch-lorests in which aspen, paper birch, or gray birch, singly or in combination, make up a plurality of the stocking; com- mon associates include balsam fir, red maple, red spruce, white ash, and white pine.Fuelwood.Round, split, or chipped woody material (with or without bark) that is converted to household, commercial, or industrial energy.Geographic unit.A county or a group of counties within a state that is large enough to provide an adequate sample that will yield statistically reliable estimates of timberland area, volume, and components of change.Greenton.A unit of measure of green weight equivalent to 2,000 pounds or 907.1848 kilo- grams.Green ton stand-volume class.A classification of forest land in terms of net green weight of the aboveground components of all live trees per unit area.It is usually expressed in green tons per acre.Green weight.The weight of wood and bark as it would be if it had been recently cut.It is usually expressed in pounds or tons.Gross growth.The sum of accretion and ingrowth.Growing-stock trees.Live trees of commercial species classified as sawtimber, poletimber, saplings, or seedlings; that is, all live trees of commercial species except rough and rotten trees.Growing-stock volume.Net volume, in cubic feet, of growing-stock trees 5.0 inches d.b.h. and larger from a 1 -foot stump to a minimum 4.0-inch top diameter outside bark of the central stem, or to the point where the central stem breaks into limbs.Net volume equals gross volume, less de- duction for cull.Hardwoods.Dicotyledonous trees, usually broad-leaved and deciduous.Harvested cropland.All land from which crops were harvested or hay was cut and all land in orchards, citrus groves, vineyards, and nursery and greenhouse products.Industrial products.All roundwood products ex- cept fuelwood.Ingrowth.The estimated net volume of growing- stock trees that became 5.0 inches d.b.h. or larg- er during the period between inventories, divided by the number of growing seasons between sur- veys.International 1/4-inch rule.A log rule or formula for estimating the board-foot volume of logs.The mathematical formula is: (0.22D 2 -0.71 D) (0.904762) for 4-foot sections, where D= diameter inside bark at the small end of the log section.This rule is used as the USDA Forest Service standard log rule in the Eastern United States.Land area, (a) Bureau of Census: The area of dry land and land temporarily or partly covered by water, such as marshes, swamps, and river flood plains; streams, sloughs, estuaries, and canals less than 1/8 statute mile wide; and lakes, reser- voirs, and ponds less than 40 acres in area, (b) Forest Inventory and Analysis: same as (a) except that the minimum width of streams, etc., is 120 feet, and the minimum size of lakes, etc., is 1 acre.Land-use edge.A condition created by the juxta- position of two differing land uses.Lesser woody stem.Shrub or vine species, or tree species stem that is less than 5.0 inches d.b.h.Logging residues.The unused portions of growing-stock trees harvested or killed in the pro- cess of logging.Manufacturing plant residues.Wood materials that are generated when round timber (roundwood) is converted into wood products.This includes slabs, edgings, trimmings, bark, miscuts, sawdust, shavings, veneer cores and clippings, and pulp screening.If these residues are used, they are referred to as plant byproducts.Mast.Seed produced by woody-stemmed, perennial pla
DOI: 10.2737/ne-rb-106
Authors: David R. Dickson, Carol L. McAfee, Carol L. McAfee
Institutions: US Forest Service, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Language: English
Subfield: Forestry
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Life on land
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W289881097