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4 Forest Survey Sampling Designs: A 27 Joint Annual Forest Inventory and History Monitoring System: The North Central Perspective W.E. Frayer and George M. Furnival Ronald E. McRoberts Sampling designs used in national Developed jointly by two of the Forest forest survey programs have been Service’s regional research stations, changing with those programs since the system’s North Central the 1930s. That history gives context implementation is discussed. to changes now under way. 11 Adopting an Annual Inventory 33 Analytical Alternatives for an System: User Perspectives Annual Inventory System Paul C. Van Deusen, Stephen P. Francis A. Roesch and Prisley, and Alan A. Lucier Gregory A. Reams For the new annual system to Differences between annual and succeed, it will need increased periodic inventory approaches require participation from the states, internal revisiting previous assumptions about changes in emphasis, and greater use the spatial and temporal trends in the of technology. data. 16 Rationale for a National Annual 38 Improving Forest Inventories: Forest Inventory Program Three Ways to Incorporate Auxiliary Information Andrew J.R. Gillespie Andrew P. Robinson, David C. Hamlin, and Stephen E. Fairweather Changing from a periodic to an annual inventory system for the The potential benefits of integrating Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) auxiliary information into estimates of program has significant implications forest stand inventory are attractive; for traditional and new users. three popular techniques are presented. 21 Annual Forest Inventory: 44 Multistage Remote Sensing: Cornerstone of Sustainability in the Toward an Annual National South Inventory Gregory A. Reams, Francis A. Raymond L. Czaplewski Roesch, and Noel D. Cost With much of FIA data out of date, a Inventory data from the new Southern national remote sensing program is Annual Forest Inventory System will needed. Multistage sampling designs form the basis of state, regional, and could provide cost savings and new national sustainability assessments. products. Biometrics and Inventory History Forest Survey Sampling Designs A History ne of the first signals of a need vey of the forest resources of the coun- Extensive inventories of forested lands in the United for a national forest inventory try…No such survey has ever been States were begun in the early part of the 20th appears in Greeley’s (1920) made.” It was pointed out that “data… century, but widespread, frequent use was not O Timber Depletion and the Answer: have been compiled from a great vari- common until after World War II. Various sampling The original forests of the United ety of sources secured for different pur- designs have been tried; some have proved States are estimated to have covered poses by different organizations with efficient for estimating certain parameters but not 822 million acres and to have con- varying degrees of accuracy.” others. Some designs, though efficient in many tained 5,200 billion board feet of tim- The second milestone report, the respects, have been abandoned because of their ber.…There are left today about 137 Copeland Report, was prepared by the million acres of virgin timber, 112 mil- complexity.Others, while possibly not demonstrat- Forest Service in 1930 and presented to lion acres of culled and second-growth ing high efficiency, have been adopted because of Congress in 1933. It included new data timber large enough for sawing, 133 that had become available to supple- their simplicity. This is a history of these million acres partially stocked with ment the data of the Capper Report, but applications. smaller growth, and 81 million acres of devastated and practically waste there was still no “grand sampling de- land.…Three-fifths of the timber orig- sign” to acquire data. inally in the United States is gone. Early Legislation and Applications By W.E.Frayer and The bulk of the report was a call for The McSweeney-McNary Forest George M. Furnival legislation to protect forestland from Research Act of 1928 had authorized fire and to increase the area of public the Forest Service to conduct a na- land. But one small section of the re- tional forest survey, calling for “a deter- port read “legislation is needed… mination of the present and potential which will permit the Secretary of productivity of forest land.” Because Agriculture to survey the forest re- the main concern in those days was the sources of the United States, determine timber situation, the survey was pri- the present volume together with the marily a timber inventory. The survey present and possible production of began in 1930 (Andrews 1932; Wilcox each class of timber in every important 1938) in Oregon, McNary’s home forest region.…” state, as described by Doig (1976). The remarks in Greeley’s 1920 re- Planning had begun in 1929 when port were expanded in the Capper Re- Thornton T. Munger, the first director port published the same year. The of the Pacific Northwest Forest Experi- USDA Forest Service views this report ment Station, received $30,000 in as the first of a series that incorporated funding (Van Hooser et al. 1992). The new data, and it was considered a mile- first approach in the Pacific Northwest stone in appraising our timber supply. was to use available private data with However, the report admits that “a some fieldwork for verification and comprehensive and fully adequate re- supplementation. Doig described an port…would require an exhaustive sur- experiment carried out in 1930–31 in 4 December 1999 Courtesy of Weyerhaeuser Company Archives, Tacoma, Washington Tacoma, Archives, Company Courtesy of Weyerhaeuser Initial forest surveys were primarily timber inventories. Although extensive sampling began around 1930,not until the late 1940s were sampling designs developed for efficiency and suitability to local conditions. Lewis County, Washington, in which a Two 1931 reports (Anonymous; Lentz) Forest Service Chief F.A. Wilcox line-plot survey was run to compare it described the line-plot-sample method stated in his 1938 annual report that with compilations made for the area (based on the Lewis County experi- We need in forests all the 630 mil- and to assess its potential for use in the ment) that was proposed for 25 million lion acres we now have and that are South. Plots were one-quarter acre in acres of bottomland in the Mississippi most valuable for forest growth. Yet size and spaced at 10-chain intervals on Delta states. Two interim reports were unless it is abused and neglected, we east-west strips run through forested made in 1932 (Anonymous; Lentz). probably do not and will not need areas. About 486 miles of survey line Lentz reported that 5,815 plots had more forest land. For 300 years our had been run by the end of June 1931. been taken on 4.4 million bottomland forests have been chopped, burned, The fieldwork included 3,888 sample acres, and Eldredge (1935) noted that and depleted. Yet with care and fore- plots at a cost of $10,448. It was de- field inventory of 75 million acres in thought there seems no excuse for a timber famine of national proportions. cided not to use the method in the the South would be completed by Douglas-fir region because of the April 1, 1935. A second report by El- He also stated that “the Forest Sur- rugged terrain, but the method was dredge (1937) described methodology vey indicates that we have more forests adopted in the East. using three-man crews on parallel com- than we thought…and more forest Some results for Oregon and Wash- pass lines 10 miles apart taking quar- growth.” It was also pointed out that ington were published in 1932 ter-acre plots at 10-chain intervals. He Forest Survey had begun in 1930, and (Cowlin). A later report was published stated that analysis had begun and that about one-half of the forests of the for the Douglas-fir region (Anony- some results had been published. United States had been surveyed, with mous 1934). Wieslander (1935), head In 1938, Garver reported that the about 60 percent of the resulting data of Forest Survey at the California For- forest inventory phase was well along compiled. est and Range Experiment Station in the South, Pacific Northwest, and With the outbreak of World War II, from 1935 to 1950, described the first the Lake states. He said the job was this status remained for several years. steps of Forest Survey in California. half done; 289 million acres of forest- The 1940 Yearbook of Agriculture pub- He said that mapping was in progress land had been examined. There was no lished several tables of information on and that there was a plan to take information on sampling design or in- the status of the nation’s forests by R.E. 35,000 field plots, but this was not tensity. Cunningham (1939a,b) re- Marsh, acting chief, and William H. done until after 1950. ported that the inventory phase of Gibbons, senior forester, Division of In 1930 “Cap” Eldredge was placed Forest Survey in the Lake states had Forest Economics, Forest Service. They in charge of Forest Survey in the South, been completed in 1937, and he re- had drawn on reports and unpublished headquartered at the Southern Forest ported preliminary statistics on areas manuscripts by many members of the Experiment Station in New Orleans. and volumes. Forest Service: “Where authoritative Journal of Forestry 5 tensity of field plots was used in saw- timber stands than in poletimber stands, and a higher intensity in pole- timber than in seedling–sapling stands. In the Pacific Northwest, estimating volumes in old-growth stands pre- sented a different type of challenge than that faced in the East. Floyd John- son, a statistician at the Pacific North- west Forest and Range Experiment Sta- tion, began working on this challenge (Johnson 1950; Johnson and Hixon 1952).