Massachusetts Timber Harvesting Study 1984-2003

Sustainability of the forest at a regional scale in landscapes dominated by non-industrial private forest (NIPF) ownership depends on the often-independent actions and behaviors of thousands of private families and individuals. These NIPF lands comprise the dominant forest ownership in many parts of the United States, and represent an important part of the greater forest landscape matrix even in parts of the region where industrial and/or public lands dominate. In northeastern states, NIPF lands can represent 75% or more of total forest area. While forest landowner attitudinal survey work in the past several decades has explored reasons for ownership, motivations, and perspectives on traditional management (e.g., do you intend to harvest in the next 10 years?), little if any study has focused on attitudes and, importantly, documented behaviors related to sustainability on their lands. Some landowner attitudes pertaining to the notion of sustainability can be inferred from earlier work (e.g., documented interest in wildlife habitat and nature, aesthetics, and privacy), but these do not directly link to sustainability or timber productivity on their own lands. As the urban-rural interface expands from metropolitan centers, though this wooded landscape may appear to be forested from the air, it no longer sustains a number of benefits upon which society has grown to depend. In particular, timber harvesting declines as a viable and sustainable land use activity. We seek to: 1. Study the decision-making process, priorities, and behaviors of different types of NIPF owners, in terms of sustainable harvesting, and sale/ development; 2. Use landscape-scale spatial data and associated demographic data to assess the extent to which such landscapes can remain sustainable producers of wood products in the face of expanding urban/ suburban influence; and 3. study sites that have sustained harvests and document the successional trajectory, in an effort to estimate the future composition of the forest landscape based on this form of human-induced disturbance. In so doing, we will identify characteristics of a NIPF landscape in which harvesting or the production of timber is no longer sustainable. Sustainable timber production from local forested landscapes plays a role in global environmental quality. In the Illusion of Preservation, Berlik et al argue for decreases in wood consumption, coupled with increases in local wood production, to avoid "exporting" the need to harvest wood from countries that have a negligible environmental safety net. The result of this is that forest that does not sustainably produce wood "at home" in effect shifts the demand to other places, thereby making local preservation an illusion.