Wood Resources

Each passing week bad news about the rising cost of home heating helps turn a young man's fancy in the direction of firewood.

At the turn of the century, nearly 80 years ago, the average American consumed about 70 cubic feet of wood each year for fuel. For easy thinking purposes, that is an amount roughly equivalent to a 4- by 8-foot sheet of plywood just over two feet thick. It also is about the net volume contained in a purchased cord of firewood when the useless airspaces are accounted for.

Over the years, the per capita annual firewood usage has fallen drastically down to about 3 cubic feet, roughly the equivalent of an inch-thick sheet of plywood. With widespread new interest in using wood for fuel, we can hope there is no prophecy in the fact that the only time there has been significant increase in the use of firewood this century was during the 1930's Depression.

Along with the decrease in use of wood for fuel, there also has been somewhat of a decline in the per-capita use of wood for lumber. Partially counterbalancing these declines have been increases in per capita use of wood for pulp and plywood. Considering all types of use, the American of today utilizes less than half the wood each person used in 1900, Even though the number of people in the United States as a whole has grown much since 1900 the total utilization of wood has dropped from about 12 billion cubic feet in 1900 to 10 billion cubic feet in 1976.

According to an article by Marion Clawson in the June 15, 1979 issue of Science magazine, the timber inventory in the United States underwent a drastic decline between 1800 and 1900 when many trees were simply cut and burned in place to make room for agriculture. Since 1900? changes in timber inventory have been comparatively minor. The low point was reached about 1945. The listed inventory has increased slightly during the past 25 years. But, as noted in Clawson's article, it was about 25 years ago that Alaska's timber was starting to be included in the inventory so one cannot be certain that there has been an actual growth in the volume of useable trees in America's forests.