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Introduction

The South’s forests are expansive, diverse, and vital. Many forces—ranging from development to environmental change to timber management—continue to shape them. Although change has been constant, the rate of change is accelerating and has raised questions about the sustainability of southern forests and the broad complement of values they provide.

Sustainability is a sweeping concept, ensuring opportunities for the future as resources are used today. Pursuing sustainability requires broad and long-term commitment and ongoing monitoring, study, and action. The first step is to understand and anticipate the forces of change that will directly shape forested ecosystems and the social factors that are likely to drive those changes. Ultimately, society must manage change to achieve sustainability.

Figure 1—The region examined by the Southern Forest Resource Assessment.

The Southern ForestResource Assessment documents and analyzes the many factors that are affecting the forests of 13 Southern States (fig. 1). Our goal has been to answer several specific questions about southern forests and their uses, and, in the process, to create a comprehensive base of information about them. This undertaking is complex, given the multiple factors that influence forests, the diversity of the region’s people and biota, and the history of land and resource uses.

The South has a strong regional identity that is shaped in large part by its agrarian past and the predominantly private ownership of its land. With more than 5 million private owners controlling 89 percent of southern forests, forest area and conditions are influenced by diverse landowner interests and objectives. An ever-changing patchwork of forest uses and conditions has resulted.