Excerpt from The South's Fourth Forest: Alternatives for the Future The third forest will continue to be the source of the timber harvested in the South during the rest of this century. The forest that will come after that - the South's fourth forest - can take almost any form desired. The changes now taking place in the third forest are cause for great concern. Our most recent surveys of forest resources show that net annual timber growth, after rising for decades, has begun to decline. Softwood timber removals are above net annual growth over large areas, and inventories are beginning to decrease. A similar situation is developing for hardwoods. If these recent trends continue, The preface to The South's Third Forest How It Can Meet Future Demands (southern Forest Resource Analy'sis Committee 1969) began: The analysis was developed to learn how the Sout-t achieved its vastly improved, if not wholly 'favorable, timber position over the past several decades and how this trend could be continued. In a general sense, this is also the basic purpose of the pres ent study. Concern about the timber situation in the South began in the early l9oo's, when it become evident that forests over much of the South were not regenerating after harvest. This con cern led to a series of national and regional analyses that provided an analytical basis for developing policies and pro grams to renew and sustain the South's timber resource. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.