A History of USFS Forest Survey 18702003

1
A History of USFS Forest Survey1870-2003

• Vernon J. LaBau
• James T. Bones
• Neal P. Kingsley
• H. Gyde Lund
• W. Brad Smith

2
Scope

• Pre 1900 Events
• 1900 through 1930
• 1931 through WW II
• WW II to 2000 by decades
• 2000 through 2003
• Planning ahead

3
Prehistoric Resource Data Capture
Early data capture in wildlife assessment ak
Thinking inside the box
4
Pre 1900 Events

• 1830 First Statewide Inventory, Massachusetts.
• 1874 Commissionership of Forestry to do Surveys.
• 1877 Hough publishing forest condition reports.
• 1879 USGS gathering forest data.
• 1886 Eglestons Facts and figures in respect to
  forests.
• 1897 USGS mapping forests.
• 1897 Organic Act passes.

5
Early Scenes of Forest Survey
6
1900 to 1920

• 1903 Bur. Of Forestry (Gifford Pinchot) develops
  a strip sampling method.
• 1905 US Forest Service established.
• 1909 Kellog publishes Timber Supply of the
  United States.
• 1910 US Timber estimated at 530 billion board
  feet. 1997 Int. Bd. Ft. estimated are at 2,074,
  billion, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.
• 1912 USFS Chief Graves sets down principles and
  guides for Forest Survey.
• 1919 Graves requests funds for Forest Survey.

7
1920 through 1930

• 1920 Raphel Zon publishes Forest Resources of
  the World.
• 1922 Michigan begins its Forest Surveys.
• 1928 McSweeney-McNary law enacted.
• 1930 Lake States Station receives Forest Survey
  funding.
• 1930 PNWs Douglas-fir Survey started.

8
Cowlins Reports
PNW GTR 584
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Early Impressions

• Cowlin remembered some rewarding moments out in
  the big trees. Francis X. Schumacher, a visiting
  scientist from the Washington, D.C., headquarters
  profited nicely from the Survey crew in a weekend
  poker game at Chehalis. But on Monday, Cowlin
  and a cohort evened the score with bets on tree
  diameters before they were measured. Shu had a
  tendency to underestimate the large old growth
  Douglas-fir, Cowlin reported.

10
Early Impressions

• Despite the hard work, most Forest Survey people
  felt fortunate to have such an interesting and
  rewarding job, perhaps best expressed by Philip
  A. Briegleb, who joined PNWs Forest Survey in
  1929, later serving as PNWs Station Director
  from 1963-1971, when he said (Doig 1977)
• I thought the job on Forest Survey...was the
  best possible job in the world. It was exploring
  an unknown resource, in beautiful places, with
  some wonderful timber-and getting paid for it.

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1931 through WWII

• 1931 First PNW Forest Survey Report by Cowlin.
• 1931 Central States Station doing Forest Survey.
• 1931 Mississippi starts Forest Survey.
• 1932 USDA report The forest situation in the
  US.
• 1932 Forest Survey on the Mississippi delta
  published.
• 1933 USDA Copeland report A national plan for
  American forestry published.
• 1938 Forest Survey reports for Michigan,
  Minnesota, and Wisconsin near completion.
• 1941 Forest Survey put on hold for World War II.

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Surveys in the 1930s
1930s Plot design in South and East 3-mile
transect used in PNW
1932 Picture of Survey in a Mississippi
Swamp, Crew included George Gevorkiantz
and Russell Cunningham of the Lake States.
Dick Smith, Lake States, 1934
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Interruption for WW II
Ari
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War Contributions by Forestry

• Sitka spruce for airplanes and PT boats.
• Parachutes science from smokejumpers.
• Interpretation of aerial photos.

15
End of WW II through 1950

• 1946 Forest Survey restarted using
• Aerial photography
• Fixed area plot clusters
• WW II equipment (jeeps, jerry cans, radios, etc.)
• 1946 Central States funded for 2nd survey.
• 1946 Forest Survey began in Missouri.
• 1948 Bitterlich published on Winkelzahlprobe.
• 1949 Forest Survey completed in Illinois and
  Kentucky.
• 1949 USDA published survey results from between
  1945 and 1949.

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End of WW II through 1950
Central and Lake States Plot, Late 1940s
17
1950 to 1960

• 1952 Lew Grosenbaugh published on Plotless
  Cruising.
• 1952 Stephen Spurr published Forest Inventory.
• 1953 Forest Survey began in southeast Alaska.
• 1955 Forest Survey began in Intermountain States.
• 1955 David Bruce published on Prism Cruising.
• 1956 Karl Moessner develops Photo
  Interpretation training manual.
• 1958 USDA published Timber Resource Review.
• 1958 Forest Survey adopts 10-point sample.

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1950 to 1960
19
1960 to 1970

• 1960s Forest Survey staff involved in
  international assistance (Bones, Born, McLean).
• 1960 National Forest Systems began their
  management forest surveys.
• 1960 Forest Survey began in interior Alaska.
• 1962 Bickford published on Two-phase sampling.
• 1962 Ware and Cunia published on Sampling with
  partial replacement.
• 1964 Harold Young published on Forest Biomass.
• 1965 USDA published Timber Trends in the US.
• 1966 Kim Iles in graduate school at OSU.
• 1967 USDA published 4809.11 Forest Survey
  Handbook.
• 1968 Cal Stott published Continuous Forest
  Inventory.

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1960 to 1970
21
1970 to 1980

• 1970s Ed Frayer holding Forest Inventory training
  sessions at CSU.
• 1971 Lew Grosenbaugh published on 3-P sampling.
• 1973 USDA published the Timber Outlook
  national assessment.
• 1974 Congress enacts RPA (Resources Planning
  Act).
• 1974 Larson Goforth published TRAS.
• 1975 Kingsley published Ownership Studies.
• 1975 Langley published on Using LANDSAT for
  forest inventory.
• 1975 RET team established in Fort Collins
  researching multi-resource inventory techniques.
• 1976 Congress enacts National Forest Management
  Act.
• 1978 Congress enacts Cooperative Forestry Act.
• 1978 Barnard published on FINSYS.
• 1978 Hahn published on FREP.
• 1979 McClure published on Multi-resource
  Inventories.
• 1979 Cost published on Horizontal-vertical
  profile sampling.

22
1970 to 1980
23
1980 to 1990

• 1980s Landsat imagery tested for inventories in
  Alaska and Southern US.
• 1980s Forest Inventory workshops held worldwide
  (many led by Gyde Lund).
• 1980s Forest Type Maps prepared from satellite
  imagery for US, Canada, Mexico by Forest Survey
  staff.
• 1982 USDA published An analysis of the timber
  situation in the United States.
• 1987 USDA updated US Forest Inventory Statistics.

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1980 to 1990
25
1990s

• 1990s Several Forest Survey people assist with
  international efforts.
• 1990 USDA published Forest Biomass Resources of
  the United States.
• 1991 Victor Rudis published on inventorying for
  wildlife and wildlife habitat.
• ca1991 Forest Health Monitoring Program begins.
• 1992 USDA updated US forest inventories.
• 1992 National forest inventory data base
  established.
• 1992 Blue Ribbon Panel initiated, first report.
• 1992 Rio de Janeiro Conference held.
• 1993 Montreal Protocol initiated

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1990s
27
1990s Continued

• ca 1996 Forest Inventory and Forest Health
  Monitoring programs merge.
• 1997 USDA updates forest inventory statistics.
• 1998 Agriculture Research, Extension and
  Education Reform act enacted.
• 1998 Second Blue Ribbon report published.
• 1999 New national Forest Inventory strategic plan
  initiated.

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2000 thru 2003

• 2000 UNECE published Temporal and boreal forest
  assessment.
• 2001 USDA published on National forest inventory
  data base.
• 2001 FAO published on Global Forest Resource
  Assessment.
• 2001 USDA published on U.S. forest facts and
  trends.
• 2002 USDA updates forest inventory statistics.
• 2003 USDA published National report on
  sustainable forests.
• 2003 USDA published Projections for the 2000
  timber assessment.
• 2003 USDA published the Revised Forest Survey
  Handbook.
• 2003 Harrington published summary of 1930 forest
  survey reports by Cowlin.
• 2003 Haynes (USDA) published An analysis of the
  timber situation in the United States1952 to
  2050.

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Planning ahead

• Today, work continues, establishing and
  revisiting field plots, editing and correcting
  the raw data, committing the data to analysis,
  preparing the report tables, writing the reports,
  and finally merging each set of state data and
  information into the decadal national RPA
  reports. Program directions and foci change.
  Monies become available to try to do annual
  inventories, and units gear up to meet these
  changes in directives. The search goes on for
  more efficient and more cost effective sampling
  designs, and good men and women continue with a
  dedication to evaluating forest inventories and
  forest health, producing information and analyses
  that will serve generations well into the future.

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Job Security
There is always one more tree to count. The job
will never end.