Survey done on hurricane David's damage to forests of Dominica
Burma establishes forest research institute
Brushland management symposium
Improving small-scale forestry
Forest products markets in the South Europe region and other Mediterranean countries
Thinning methods matter less than intensity of thinning
Brazilian pulp
Latin American pulp and paper congress in Spain
New CATIE activities
Agri-silviculture and France
More than 70 percent of the trees in the southern half of Dominica were severely damaged in August 1979 by hurricane David. However, the storm destroyed only scattered small areas of forest in the island's northern portion, according to a study by Douglas J. Poole, consultant, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Milton Apple-field and Robert B. McDonald, US Forest Service. The island contains the only extensive tropical ecosystem in the Caribbean that remains undisturbed by man. Major species include Dacryodes, Amanoa, Sterculia, Richeria, Hibiscus, and Symphonia.
Although some potential salvage is possible, much of the forest is inaccessible because of steep slopes. Members of the survey team found that as many as 10 million board feet of timber could be retrieved if operations were begun rapidly. They recommended that a small portable sawmill be installed in the area of heaviest damage to process lumber for reconstruction of housing destroyed by the hurricane. Timber unusable for lumber, they suggested, could be made into smaller wood products needed in the Dominica economy.
The team noted that natural regeneration has already begun in the heavily damaged forest.
The Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma is establishing a Forest Research Institute. Located at Yezin, a village about 400 km north of Rangoon, near the city of Pyinmana, the institute is part of a central complex for agricultural education and research that the Government has been developing at Yezin for the past decade or more. It marks Burma's first effort to establish a formal organization for forestry research, although forests constitute one of the country's major resources and long have played an important role in the national economy.
Funding for the institute is being supplied by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with FAO as the executive agency. Technical assistance is being provided through FAO by the College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF), State University of New York, Syracuse. The agreement calls for four years of technical services by the college, including the assistance of a chief technical adviser, a silviculturist, and short-term specialists in forest biometry and statistics, forest soils, and wood products engineering including wood technology.
The Forest Research Institute operates under the Forest Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, which has headquarters at Rangoon. Many of the institute's professional staff, numbering between 15 and 20, have been drawn from the department. The director of the institute is U Sein Maung Wint, who holds a forestry degree from Rangoon University and has done advanced study in forestry at Canberra, Australia, and at Oxford University in England. The chief technical adviser for the project is George A. Armstrong, forest economist from ESF, and the resident adviser in silviculture is Clemens M. Kaufman, formerly of the School of Forestry and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville.
Burma contains 75 percent of the world's remaining stands of natural teak, as well as an abundance of tropical evergreen forest species that are currently underutilized. Thus the Forest Research Institute is seen as holding much promise for the future of the country, and for the future of tropical forestry in general.
An international symposium on brushland management will be held in San Diego, California, 22-26 June 1981. The symposium will cover topics of current concern to managers of brushlands and to researchers who are studying these ecosystems. The focus will be on brushland management in areas of the world that have a Mediterranean-type climate, characterized by hot, dry summers and long, rainy winters. These areas include the Mediterranean basin, parts of southern California and the southwestern United States, and parts of Africa, Latin America and Australia. Symposium topics will include: the effects of brushland management on vegetation, wildlife, soils and hydrology; the use of prescribed fire as a brushland management tool; and new ways to make better use of brushlands.
Further information about the symposium is available by writing to: Chairman, Dynamics and Management of Mediterranean-type Ecosystems: An International Symposium, Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, 4955 Canyon Crest Drive, Riverside, California 92507.
The productive potential of forests belonging to small-scale private owners in Europe and North America falls far short of being fully utilized in a number of countries, partly because of lack of adequate training and support services.
A seminar sponsored jointly by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and FAO highlighted the problems involved in providing such training and related services.
The seminar was held at Honne, Biri (Norway), from 10-14 March 1980. Its final report notes that the need for training and extension services for small-scale forest owners has become more important because of the rapid increase in cutting of fuelwood in many countries. Another reason for providing training facilities is the possibility of creating new forest energy resources.
The proceedings of the seminar, comprising the papers presented to it by experts, are to be issued by the Norwegian organizers in English and French. Further details may be obtained from: The Secretariat, Timber Section, ECE/FAO Agriculture and Timber Division, Palais des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 10.
Even under the present conditions of uncertainty regarding future trends, it is a reasonable assumption that demographic and economic expansion in the South Europe region will continue at a rate higher than the average for the rest of Europe. (The "South Europe" region is taken to comprise Albania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Yugoslavia.)
This is the conclusion of a study issued by the secretariat of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), entitled Trends and prospects for forest products in South Europe and other Mediterranean countries. The study was first presented in September 1979 to an ad hoc meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, held under the auspices of the Timber Committee of the ECE and in cooperation with the European Forestry Commission of FAO.
The report points to serious implications for the costs of forest products imports and increasing uncertainties about the adequacy of future availability of wood for export in some of the main supplying regions. It provides justifications for policies to develop domestic sources of supply over the long term to the extent possible within economic, social and environmental constraints.
Even a relatively modest growth in consumption in South Europe can be met partly from domestic sources (removals, industrial residues, wastepaper), but there will also need to be an appreciable growth in net imports of forest products between the mid-1970s and the year 2000. This is likely to impose an additional strain on some South European countries' balances of payments.
A completely new dimension to the problem, the impact of which is as yet difficult to assess but which has been given new urgency by the escalation of prices for crude oil in 1979/80, is the potential role that wood may be called on to play as a source of energy. Even in the relatively timber-poor countries of South Europe, the forest represents an important natural resource, which under sound management is not only renewable but can be expanded over the long term.
In the mid-1970s the twelve countries of the South Europe region accounted for 46 percent of Europe's population, 35 percent of its gross domestic product, 32 percent of its consumption of sawnwood, 30 percent of wood-based panels, 34 percent of paper and paperboard, but as much as 57 percent of fuelwood. With the exception of fuelwood, all these percentages are expected to be higher by the year 2000, mainly as a function of population growth.
An annex to the study contains a brief review of the situation in the forest products sector for seven other countries bordering the Mediterranean, namely, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia. In the mid-1970s these countries depended on imports for two thirds of their requirements of industrial forest products. The corresponding figure in the South Europe region was two fifths.
A stand of pine established by direct-seeding in central Louisiana was pre-commercially thinned at three years to determine the effects of different thinning methods and intensities on tree growth. Four thinning level, and two thinning methods (selective and strip) were tested.
Results to age 16 years show that strip thinning-- the fastest and cheapest method-is just as effective as the other methods. For most :rapid pulpwood volume growth, stand density should be about 750 trees per acre. Less dense stands may produce larger trees, but total volume will be reduced.
After treatment, stand density ranged from 750 to 5 033 trees per acre at age three and 690 to 2490 trees per acre al: age 16. Most losses were from suppression of small trees. Since age 11, over 2 000 trees per acre have died in the unthinned check and less than 50 have died in plots selectively thinned to 750 per acre.
Mean total heights of dominants and codominants (ranging from 34.4 to 40.6 feet among treatments) were primarily related to site factors, not to treatment effects. At age 16, total volume was directly related to stand density. Plots cut back to 750 per acre had three times more volume in trees (5.6 inches dbh than unthinned checks. Yields in trees (3.6 inches dbh did not vary greatly among densities. Response of diameters to thinning was greatest at low stocking and slight at densities above 1 500 per acre. Plots thinned to 750 trees per acre had 186 stems per acre larger than 6 inches dbh. When counting trees larger than 4 or 5 inches dbh, no treatment we, clearly superior.
At 1 450 stems per acre, the mean diameter of trees (5.6 inches was significantly larger :in the checquerboard thinning pattern than in either the selective or strip plus selective treatments. No other differences in height, diameters, or volumes between thinning methods were significant.
From LOHREY R.E. 1977. Growth responses of loblolly pine to pre-commercial thinning. South. J. Appl. For., 1 [3]: 19-22.
Four large pulp mills in Brazil, each producing 750-1 000 tons of pulp per day, are breathing new life into the country's pulp and paper industry. In mid-1978, when these four plants, which cost US$2 thousand million, were being completed, they looked like economic failures. What has dramatically changed that situation is that the world pulp price increased by 50 percent, from $300 to $450 a ton, during the two years since then.
Another factor is that the short-fibred pulp manufactured from Brazilian eucalyptus is rapidly gaining acceptance by buyers, who like its more even texture and lower weight compared to long-fibred pulp.
Exports reached 600 000 tons of pulp last year, allowing the pulp industry to take in $180 million, and are expected to rise to 800 000 tons this year. The Government's target for five years from now is to produce six million tons of pulp annually, both for export and for domestic consumption. This figure would represent five percent of the world's total pulp production.
The Brazilian pulp industry has an inherent advantage over those in many other countries. Eucalyptus there adds 35-40 cubic metres of wood per hectare per year, compared with an average of 20 cubic metres in Portugal and only five in North America and Scandinavia. Some varieties grow even faster, adding 65-70 cubic metres per hectare per year. This means that trees can be cut only seven years after they are planted.
The second Latin American Congress on Pulp and Paper will be held 4-8 May 1981 at the Palace of Congresses in Torremolinos, Malaga, Spain. The theme of the Congress will be "New raw materials, processes and derived products," a look at present and future prospects of the pulp and paper industry in developing countries. An exhibition organized by the
Spanish paper industry entitled "IPEXPO VI (81)" will be held concurrently in the Palace of Congresses.
This second Congress, occurring five years after the first in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1976, is jointly sponsored by the Organization of American States (OAS), the Spanish Association of Pulp Manufacturers, the Spanish Association of Paper and Board Manufacturers and Spain's National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA). Organization is in the hands of the Technical Research Association of the Spanish paper industry.
Mr. José Luis Asenjo, president of the organizing committee, writes, "It is our desire that this second Congress will act as a bridge between American and European technologies. The occasion will mark the first time that the OAS will be sponsoring such an event outside the Americas."
Technical activities will be divided into two kinds of events: lectures and round tables, each with numerous subgroups and subtopics. There are five lecture subgroups: raw materials; new technological developments in the manufacture of paper pulps; new technological developments in the manufacture of paper and board; converting and packaging; and environmental protection and energy saving. Titles of the four round-table subgroups are: standardization, research and development, education and personnel training, and future trends of the paper industry in Latin American countries.
Two important new developments have taken place at the Centro agronómico tropical de investigación y enseñanza (CATIE) in Turrialba, Costa Rica. One is the implementation, begun last December, of the "Forestry Information and Documentation Service for Tropical America" (INFO-RAT). The other is the publication of a new book, Field guide to the forest trials of CA TIE, Turrialba, Costa Rica, which summarizes a mass of information and data going back 33 years.
INFORAT is being run by Mr Humberto Jiménez-Saa, a forester with a background in agricultural information and documentation. Assistance is being provided by the Government of Switzerland.
The field guide was edited by Jean Combe and Nico Gewals, two foresters in CATIE's Natural Renewable Resources Programme. It contains information on the location of the experiments, tree growth, the origin and objectives of CATIE, the managed secondary tropical forest, agro-forestry studies, wildlands and watershed management projects, entomological and pathological problems, and, finally, on supporting facilities such as the Latin American seed bank, the nursery and the Forest Products Laboratory.
The field guide is available for $10.00 from: CATIE, Turrialba, Costa Rica.
The special issue of the periodical Bulletin technique d'information issued for March-April 1980 by France's Ministry of Agriculture dealt with agriculture and forests. The edition fills 258 pages and is replete with dozens of black-and-white photographs and charts.
Since one fourth of France is covered with forest land, the topic is of special interest. This issue, however, has implications that extend well beyond France, particularly in the area of agri-silviculture. Says Minister of Agriculture Pierre Mehaignerie in the foreword, "For a long time, the interests of foresters, farmers, and ranchers have often been antagonistic. Today forestry, agriculture and grazing appear more and more complementary in man's activity, in the use and enjoyment of space, and in the needs of society."
Following two introductory articles which provide an overview, the issue is divided into four parts. Part I, treating the forest and land questions, contains eight articles on a variety of subjects. Part II, concerning the forest and pastures, has four articles. Part III, covering the economic contribution of the forest, has six. The last section, focusing on the social role of the forest, consists of five articles.
