Fall 2005

Rapid Changes In Forest Ownership Increase Fragmentation

by David Wear

In the Southeastern United States, the area, distribution, and structure of forests are almost exclusively determined by the choices of private landowners. Nearly 90 percent of forestland is held by more than 5 million individuals or firms with a broad diversity of objectives regarding their forests. In spite of this diversity, land use and resource management has played out in generally predictable ways. Overall, lands tend to move toward the use that has the highest market value, more timber is harvested in response to increasing prices, and forest investments have tracked well against expectations about future timber returns. This predictability allows us to anticipate how southeastern forests could be reshaped by ongoing economic trends and to anticipate the implications for the forest benefits valued by residents of the region.

This article focuses on three important and interacting changes affecting private forests in the South. One is land development fueled by economic and population growth. A second related effect is new patterns of growth that place higher population densities in the vicinity of forests. The third change is the restructuring of the forest products industry, which has long held many of the largest tracts of contiguous forests in the Southeastern United States. These three dynamics will determine the future extent and fragmentation of the South’s forests.

Changing Land Uses and Ownership

A comparison with recent history will show just how rapidly southeastern forests are changing. While the total area of forestland in the region varied little between the 1950s and the 1990s (plus or minus 5 percent), anticipated economic growth could result in a loss of 10 percent of forests by the year 2020—an amount of forest loss not seen since the agricultural boom of the early 19^th century. In areas that remain rural, landowners could offset forest loss by shifting some agricultural land to forest uses, but this depends on the strength of timber markets relative to markets for agricultural products. (...continued...)