New York Forests, 2012

Abstract

This report summarizes the second annual inventory of New York's forests, conducted in 2008-2012. New York's forests cover 19.0 million acres; 15.9 million acres are classified as timberland and 3.1 million acres as reserved and other forest land. Forest land is dominated by the maple/beech/ birch forest-type group that occupies more than half of the forest land. The sound wood volume on timberland has been rising and is currently 37.4 billion cubic feet, enough to produce saw logs equivalent to 93.7 billion board feet. On timberland, the average annual growth in volume of live trees outpaced removals by a ratio of 2.1:1. The net change in volume averaged 1.1 percent per year. This report includes additional information on forest attributes, land use, forest fragmentation, forest ownership, forest health indicators, timber products, statistics, and quality assurance of data collection. Detailed information on forest inventory methods and data quality are available online at http://dx

New Hampshire Forests 2017

“…42). The mortality rates are similar to other states in the region, such as Maine (1.0 percent) (McCaskill et al 2011) and New York (1.1 percent) (Widmann et al 2015).…”

“…In previous reports in several areas we summarized forest spatial integrity using a spatial integrity index that combined forest patch size, local forest density, and connectedness to core forest land; included maps of the pervasiveness of roads throughout forested areas; and introduced the additional and extensive efect that 2010 levels of housing density had on forest land (e.g., Widmann et al 2015).…”

Evaluating population expansion of black bears using spatial capture‐recapture

“…). Since then, forest cover and net wood volume (i.e., the volume of all trees >12.7 cm in diameter) have continuously increased (Widmann et al ), and in the early 1990s, black bear populations began to grow in size and expand in range (New York State Department of Environmental Conservation [NYSDEC] ). The southern distribution of bears in New York, termed the Southern Black Bear Range by the NYSDEC, appears to be expanding northwards based on recent increased intensity and frequency of human‐bear interactions.…”

Timing is Not Everything: Assessing the Efficacy of Pre- Versus Post-Harvest Herbicide Applications in Mitigating the Burgeoning Birch Phenomenon in Regenerating Hardwood Stands

“…Within the last two decades, sweet birch (Betula lenta L.; hereafter, birch) has emerged among the few species that consistently and abundantly recruit into mesophytic and northern hardwood forests of the eastern United States. Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data show, for example, sweet birch sapling (2.5-12.5 cm diameter at breast height (DBH)) density increases of 11% from 2004 to 2014 in Pennsylvania and 24% from 1993 to 2007 in New York [1,2]. This upsurge is remarkable given that, unlike other species increasing in forest understories (e.g., beech (Fagus grandifolia L.)), the relative abundance of birch in the canopy is disproportionately low compared to its abundance in forest understories [1].…”

“…Birch increases in forest understories appear to be the 21st century analogue to the red maple (Acer rubrum L.) surge of the 20th century that has now stabilized or even declined in many regions [1,2,8]. Like red maple, birch may be considered a 'super-generalist' (sensu [9]) in that it possesses wide amplitude in key traits that confer recruitment, survival, and growth advantages under a variety of conditions, including recently disturbed stands.…”