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There are an estimated 10.7 million family forest ownerships across the United States who collectively control 36% or 290 million acres of the nation's forestland. The US Department of Agriculture Forest Service National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS) provides information on the characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors of these ownerships. Between 2011 and 2013, 8,576 randomly selected family forest ownerships with at least 10 acres of forestland participated in the NWOS. Results show: amenity values are the dominant reasons for owning; owners tend to be active on their land, but most are not engaged in traditional forestry programs; and owners are relatively old. Although the general ownership patterns and reasons for owning are the same between the 2002-2006 and current iterations of the NWOS, participation in some management activities changed (some increased and some decreased) and the percentage of female primary decisionmakers increased.Keywords: private forest owners, nonindustrial private forest owners, attitudes, behaviors, demographics, management, trends T he United States is endowed with an estimated 816 million acres of forestland (Butler et al. 2016b) that provide society with myriad benefits, ranging from clean water to recreational opportunities to fiber supply. These lands exist within a social context that helps define what goods and services are produced and who benefits from them. One important component of this social context is the ownership of the resource. It is the owners who ultimately decide, within the context of biophysical, social, political, and financial constraints and opportunities, whether the land will be forested, whether and how it will be managed, and what, if any, timber harvesting or other resource extraction will be allowed.The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service's Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program is legislatively directed to "make and keep current a comprehensive inventory and analysis of the present and prospective conditions…of the forests and rangelands of the United States" (PL 93-378). As part of this charge, FIA conducts the National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS) 1 as a social complement to its plot-based forest inventory program. The objectives of the NWOS are to provide national-, regional-, and state-level information on:• Who owns the forests?• Why do they own them?• What have they done with these lands in the past? • What do they plan to do with these lands in the future? • How have these characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors changed over time?The NWOS covers all private forest ownerships in the United States, but the focus of this article is on family forest ownerships with 10 acres or more of forestland. These ownerships are the focus because of the large amount of land they own, the large number of them, the diversity of their ownership objectives, activities, and management practices, and the fact that they are the target of many forestry programs and policies. Ownerships with less than 10 acres are excluded because these are ...

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Despite the importance of the soil seed bank in tropical forest regeneration, little is known about spatial variability in species composition and abundance of seeds stored in the soil. To develop sampling methods for comparative studies, we examined species richness, spatial variation, and abundance of germinants from the soil seed bank in a 16 year old secondary, tropical wet forest at La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica. Surface soil (10 cm deep, 4.7 cm diameter) was collected at the intersection points of a gridded 1 ha plot (10 × 10‐m grid, 121 samples) and in a nested 100 m2 subplot (2 × 2‐m grid, 36 samples). The 1 ha plot had a density of 4535 seeds/m2 with 34 species observed. Based on a series of 100 randomized species accumulation curves, a Michaelis‐Menten fit predicted a mean species richness of 36.3 species; the number of observed species was close to the predicted asymptote. A nonparametric, first‐order jackknife species richness estimator predicted a species richness of 37.0 species. Eighty‐five and 95 percent of the observed species richness is contained, on average, within 41 and 74 pooled samples, respectively. Within the 100 m2 nested subplot, a density of 5476 seeds/m2 was observed, comprising 26 species with an estimated species richness (Michaelis‐Menten fit) of 29.1 species. The jackknife species richness estimator predicted a species richness of 36.7 species. For species richness and abundance of both plots, spatial autocorrelation statistics (Moran's I) were not significantly different from zero at lag distances from 2 to 100 m, indicating a random distribution at these spatial scales. For this site, accurate estimates of species composition depend upon the number of samples collected as well as the spatial distribution of sampling effort. Many small samples distributed over a large area provide greater accuracy and precision for estimating species richness of the soil seed bank.