Report Shows Tennessee Land in Forests Stable, Yet Changing in Composition

KNOXVILLE – The amount of forestland in Tennessee remains stable, but is changing in terms of species, age and ownership according to a newly released report by the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program and the Tennessee Department of Agriculture Division of Forestry. The report, titled “Tennessee’s Forests, 2004,” also shows a decline in the number of wood products jobs from 1999 to 2004.

“The hardwood forest types have dominated the Tennessee landscape in every inventory in the 50-plus years of analyzing the state’s forests through the FIA program,” said Jim Reaves, director of SRS, which coordinates the program. “The 1999 to 2002 southern pine beetle infestation, which reached epidemic proportions in 55 counties, caused a major decline in the state’s pine forest type, and led to an even greater amount of the hardwood type as it naturally replaced the pine forests in many of those areas.”

Since 1961, forests have been found on about one half of Tennessee’s 26 million acres. The amount of land in forests increased slightly between 1970, when it was at 50 percent forested, and 1999, when it was an estimated 53 percent. As of the 2004 report, Tennessee has about 13.78 million acres (52 percent) in forests. Statistically speaking this represents no change. However, this leveling off could be indicative of an anticipated decline due to fragmentation, parcelization and associated land-use change.

“While we’re glad to see the amount of forest hold steady, we’re concerned that some of our important species in terms of timber and wildlife values appear to be declining,” said Steven Scott, Tennessee state forester. “Of the 18 oak species common to Tennessee, 12 declined in stocking levels since the last report in 1999, while lesser mast (wildlife food) producing species such as yellow-poplar, sugar maple and red maple, increased significantly. Our oak-hickory forests remain the dominant forest type, but if this trend continues it could have implications on the forest’s ability to sustain the current composition of wildlife populations that rely heavily on larger mast producing species.” 

The report also shows that early successional forests, or forests in early developmental stages, with small diameter trees declined in Tennessee over the past 40-plus years (1961-2004). In 1971, early successional forests accounted for about 35 percent of all forest land. In 2004, early successional forests made up only 12 percent of forest land. A variety of wildlife benefit from early successional forests and the decline could potentially impact those species in a negative manner. Maintaining a variety of stand ages is a key component to ensuring healthy and sustainable forests across the landscape and can be established through active forest management.

Also, of concern, was the fact that 52 percent of all forested plots sampled from 2000 to 2004 contained at least one non-native, invasive plant species. These plants have the potential to severely disrupt the ecological characteristics of a forest, such as altering soil characteristics or outcompeting native species for water, nutrients, sunlight and even space.

The report shows that 85 percent of the forest land in Tennessee was owned by private landowners, including forest industry. Of the land owned by non-industrial forest landowners, 96 percent was estimated to be in parcels of less than 100 acres. This follows a nationwide trend of a greater number of landowners owning smaller tracts of land than in previous decades, and presents a challenge to natural resource professionals, such as foresters and wildlife biologists, who encourage sustainable management of land on a regional landscape scale for multiple benefits.

The study also found Tennessee lost close to 7,000 wood products jobs from 1999 to 2004. Payroll declined 4 percent, or more than $48 million, between 1999 and 2004. At the same time, value of shipments from Tennessee increased 5 percent from $6.8 billion in 1999 to $7.2 billion in 2004.

The FIA program also conducted inventories in Tennessee in 1950, 1961, 1971, 1980, 1989 and 1999. Through the FIA program, SRS works with state agencies to track forest health indicators along with comprehensive forest inventory data across the southern states. SRS measures each state about every 5 to 7 years, depending on the state. The quantity of data and time needed to analyze the data delayed publication of the 2004 report.

The complete report can be found on the Southern Research Station Web site at: http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/32506.