Search this site:

Needs for Additional Research

Most of the issues identified by the public and by forest sector analysts were addressed in some way in this chapter. Some issues could not be addressed due to data limitations and a lack of a complete understanding of certain structural relationships. First, many of the linkages between competing products, e.g., hardwood as a substitute for softwood timber, the substitution of nonwood products for products made from wood fiber, could not be evaluated because of a lack of solid empirical estimates of those linkages. Expanded understanding of those relationships through empirical modeling would improve the accuracy of SRTS as well as RPA projections of the kinds reported here. Further, in SRTS modeling, projections could not be made with confidence at scales smaller than the survey unit of where pine plantations would be established and hence which natural forest management types would be lost there as a result. Improved understanding of how decisions are made for locating plantations would improve the level of detail offered by SRTS.

The South is undergoing rapid urbanization, and the land use projections arising from SRTS modeling suggest that this trend will continue. Demographics of landowners will change as the population ages and becomes wealthier. Urbanization and demographic changes are likely to result in increased fragmentation of both forests and their ownership, but we do not know how much new fragmentation will occur or how it may affect the values and commodities obtained from forests. Better estimates of land use and forest type trends at fine spatial scales could result from a better understanding of fragmentation and urbanization.

Highlighted in this chapter are large historical and projected future increases in pine plantation timberland area and decreases in the timberland area of natural forest management types in private ownership. The pine plantation area projections can be made at the FIA level, but this level of model resolution is not adequate for projecting the effects of economic and demographic trends on pine plantations at the kinds of finer spatial resolution that would be useful for making many kinds of ecological and economic projections. A new generation of land use models that can predict with accuracy the proportion of forest in pine plantations on small spatial units, such as at the scale of counties or finer, would therefore make such projections more useful. To develop such empirical models, however, reliable data are needed on land uses and the relevant driving variables in those finer spatial units.

A key issue for further research is better understanding of how sustainability policies affect timber supply, demand, and the ecological characteristics of forests. Sustainability of forest uses in the South might be assured through more stringent government regulation of private landowners. Alternatively, sustainability could result from changes in consumer preferences and induced through commodity markets. In either case, the expense of managing and harvesting timber would change, affecting timber supply-and-demand. More complete understanding of the effects of sustainability policies could facilitate decisionmaking in both private and public sector planning and policy development.

An emerging issue that may merit investigation for its potential impacts on timber supply-and-demand is the promulgation of laws or the appearance of market incentives to sequester carbon in forests. Sequestration, done to reduce atmospheric carbon and mitigate apparent climate change, could be encouraged through subsidies, tax incentives, regulations, or voluntary creation of a national or World carbon-credit trading system. In any case, sequestration would probably involve longer rotation lengths (forest growing periods) and larger diameter trees, and so there would be ecological and timber product market consequences. Timber product markets reliant on large-diameter materials, e.g., sawtimber, might grow relative to markets utilizing primarily small diameter materials, e.g., pulpwood; but quantifying the full effects of alternative policies and market mechanisms would be useful to policymakers, climate modelers, and the timber product sector.

Finally, little is known about the potential effects on timber markets of introducing short-rotation woody crops into the fiber supply. These crops, often of hardwood tree species, would produce a kind of fiber useful for certain products (especially printing and writing papers and nonstructural panels) and not others. New sources of fiber could dampen the hardwood pulpwood price increases that have been projected for the future in this Assessment and could affect land use and timber production patterns. Little is known about where these woody crops would be grown, the scale of their production, or their ecological implications. But the prospect of their emergence merits new investigation.