Pennsylvania's Forest 2004

Abstract

In 2000, the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation's Natural Resources, Bureau of Forestry and the Northern Research Station's Forest Inventory and Analysis unit implemented a new annual system for inventorying and monitoring Pennsylvania's forests. This report includes data from 2000 to 2004. Pennsylvania's forest-land base is stable, covering 16.6 million acres or 58 percent of land area. More than 660,000 acres of forest land were lost from 1989 to 2004, mostly to residential or industrial development. However, there was a 617,500-acre gain in forest land, mostly from agricultural land. Fifty-four percent of forest land is owned by families and individuals. Forest types with red maple as a dominant species have increased, while stands with sugar maple as a dominant have decreased. The distribution of forest land by stand-size class has been shifting toward large stands that now account for 6 of 10 acres. The area of forest has increased in the poor and moderate stocking classes and decreased in the full and overstocked classes. Hemlock, sugar maple, and oaks are poised to be less dominant in the future. Increases in red maple are slowing while black birch continues to increase. Sawtimber volume totals 88.9 billion board feet, an average of about 5,000 board feet per acre. Increases in sawtimber inventory have slowed over time. Currently, only half of the forest land that should have advance regeneration is adequately stocked with high-canopy species, and only one-third has adequate regeneration for commercially desirable timber species. Grass/forb and rhizomous ferns dominate understory communities, accounting for nearly one-third of the total nontree vegetative cover sampled. Several exotic diseases and insects threaten the health of Pennsylvania's forests. Exoticinvasive plants threaten native plant diversity and forest health; however, monitoring efforts are only beginning to quantify their distribution and abundance. Stressors such as drought, acidic deposition, and ground-level ozone pollution are adversely affecting the State's forests. Continued monitoring is required to gain a more complete understanding of these impacts on this valuable resource.

Can cover data be used as a surrogate for seedling counts in regeneration stocking evaluations in northern hardwood forests?

“…McWilliams et al (2007) report that grasses, forbs, and rhizomatous ferns dominate Pennsylvania forest understories. In these conditions, there is very little relationship between percent cover and stem counts of a species by height class.…”

Pennsylvania's forest resources, 2010

“…The first comprehensive report for Pennsylvania using the new annual forest inventory system (Bechtold and others 2005) found that "the most disturbing finding from the forest inventory is the general lack of understory plants and tree regeneration across much of Pennsylvania." (McWilliams et al 2007). This finding was based on the Pennsylvania Regeneration Study (PRS) that had been ongoing since 2001.…”

Pennsylvania forests 2014

“…Historical estimates of forest land area are available from FIA reports (Alerich et Distribution of Forest Land n Nonforest n Forest n Open water Total forest land 16,572,981 16,739,199 16,916,190 16 . 1993;Considine and Powell 1980;Ferguson 1958Ferguson , 1968McCaskill et al 2013;McWilliams et al 2007) and Illick (1923).…”

“…For example, the cycle of plots measured from 2009 through 2014 are collectively labeled the 2014 inventory and were used to produce this 2014 report. The 2004 inventory was the first annual inventory to include the complete cycle of annual inventory plots (McWilliams et al 2007) and the 2009 inventory was the first annual inventory to include a complete remeasurement of plots (McCaskill et al 2013). This report for 2014 encompasses the second complete remeasurement of plots.…”