Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (21) View all

Secretary of Agriculture report on watersheds

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  • 24 APPALACHIAN AND WHITE MOUNTAIN WATERSHEDS. along the Blue Ridge. Most of them are depreciating from erosion. While no longer in forest, they are fundamentally forest lands, and their earning power can only be reestablished by replacing the forest to which they are naturally adapted. While scarcely any of the remaining timbered land is as valuable for agriculture as for timber, under the present system a large portion of it is certain to be cleared. LUMBERING AND FIRE. The following table shows the area of forest in the mountainous part of each State, with the area and percentage of cut-over and virgin land: Table 3.—Forested area of the Southern Appalachian region. Total forested area. Unlumbered and lightly culled. Lumbered and second growth. Alabama.. Georgia Kentucky Maryland North Carolina South Carolina Tennessee Virginia West Virginia. Total Acres. 3,730,000 2,730,000 11, 785,000 716,000 4,771,000 831,000 16, 483,000 7,265,000 10,272,000 Acres. 509,000 432,000 1,185,000 30,000 1,628,000 142,000 2,584,000 1,000,000 2,250,000 58,583,000 9,760,000 Per cent. 14 16 10 4 34 17 16 14 22 Acres. 3,221,000 2,298,000 10,560,000 686,000 3,183,000 689,000 13,899,000 6,265,000 8,022,000 17 8,823,000 Per cent. 86 84 90 96 66 83 84 86 78 83 Of the 58,583,000 acres of timberland, 17 per cent is uncut, while 83 per cent is cut over. The uncut timber as a rule is in the higher, more inaccessible parts of the mountains. Occupying the ridges and higher slopes, it is unequal in quality and stand to the timber of the lower slopes and coves. The cut-over lands are in all stages and conditions of reproduction and growth. From some of it has been removed only the best species, such as walnut and poplar. From most of it the chestnut and oak, which form the main body of the forest, have also been cut. Over practically all of it, whether cut over or not, fires have burned repeatedly and destroyed a large proportion of the young trees, which, if allowed to grow, would now represent growth of from one to fifty years. In like manner the undergrowth and the humus, both vital parts of the forest, have suffered great injury. Following fire, insects have at times wrought great local damage. Lumbering is going on more extensively in the hardwood forests of the Southern Appalachians than ever before. While in the past seven years the hardwood cut has decreased in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, the diminution of cutting has been chiefly in the more level parts of these States. In the mountains, where heavy cutting has not been going on for so long, the cut is probably as heavy or heavier than ever. In North Carolina cutting in the mountains has been heavy enough to increase the output of the entire State. There has been little tendency on the part of the lumberman to conservative cutting. The usual belief is that, because of the danger
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