Economics of Timber Resource Availability in a Tennessee Timbershed

A study of an eleven-county Tennessee timbershed was conducted in order to: (1) estimate the proportion of the aggregate timber resource actually available for harvest; and (2) search out motives for withholding timber from the market from otherwise commercial forest lands, by United States Forest Service definitions.

The procedures used in meeting the objectives of the study involved the use of a stratified random sample of seventy-six private nonindustrial owners and personal interviews. Owners to be interviewed were selected from county tax roles on a stratified basis of size of forest acres owned. Timber volume and growth estimates were extrapolated from the Forest Service forest survey of Tennessee of 1970.

The major finding of the study was that 58.6 percent of the forest lands in the timbershed were estimated available for harvest in 1976. Expressed in terms of volume and growth, an estimated 1,029.2 million cubic feet of growing stock (or 37.0 million cubic feet growth on growing stock) and an estimated 2,800.3 million board feet (International 1/4-inch rule) of sawtimber (or 98.3 million board feet growth on sawtimber), was possibly available for harvest.

The motives for withholding timber from the market involved reasons which may be classified into three categories: financial, competing nontimber uses of the forest resource, and reasons that stem from past experiences and/or external influences. Financial reasons restricting "willingness to sell" accounted for over one-half the reasons given for withholding timber from the market.