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Econ Home > Products > Southern Markets > Timber Sector
The area of timberland provides the starting point for an analysis of timber supply. Total timberland area within the South was relatively stable through much of the twentieth century with about a 5 percent reduction in the 1970’s tied to agricultural expansion but otherwise little net change (Figure 37). This stability in overall area reflects many offsetting changes, as some land has shifted from marginal agricultural uses to forest cover at about he same rate as forests have been converted to developed uses. Changes have also not been evenly distributed across the region. Since the 1950’s, forest losses tied primarily to agriculture expansion were concentrated in Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina saw the largest gains in forest area over this period, with modest changes observed for the remaining states.
Figure 37. Change in forest area 1945-1992 by State (Source: USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) survey data).
Ongoing changes in forest land area continue to be concentrated in specific subregions of the South. The Southern Forest Resource Assessment (Wear and Greis 2002) projected losses of forest area driven by population and income growth to be concentrated in the Southern Appalachian Piedmont in the Carolinas and Georgia. Other areas of high forest loss include counties located along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts (including nearly all of Florida), the Southern Appalachian Mountains, and areas surrounding some metropolitan areas including Washington, DC, Birmingham, AL, and Nashville, TN. About 12 million acres were forecast to be lost to urbanization between 1992 and 2020; another 19 million acres between 2020 and 2040, continuing trends observed in the 1990’s (Figure 38).
Figure 38. Projected change in percent of forest between 1992 and 2020 by county in the southeastern US (Source: Wear and Greis 2002).
The total change in timberland area depends on what happens in the rural areas of the South. While urbanization could eliminate about 12 percent of current forested areas by 2020, forecasts of forest investment indicate that nearly the same amount of land might be converted from crop and pasture to forest uses over the same period. The key factor in determining this change is the relative returns to agricultural and forest uses. Moderate increases in timber prices (about +.5 percent per year) combined with flat agricultural returns would yield a “no net loss” scenario for forest land. Flat prices for both agricultural and forest products yield no offsetting gains in forests from agricultural land and therefore a net loss of about 31 million acres by 2040. Changes in agricultural policy could also affect this margin. Declines in agricultural subsidies could lead to increases in forest land uses.
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modified: 07-Feb-2017 created by: John M. Pye |
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