THE 1993 RPA TIMBER ASSESSMENT UPDATE

A supporting technical document for the 1993 Update of the 1993 RPA Assessment

This update reports changes in the Nation's timber resource since the 1989 RPA timber assessment. The timber resource situation is analyzed to provide projections for future cost and availability of timber products to meet demand. Prospective trends in demands for and supplies of timber, and the factors that affect these trends are examined.

Highlights include the following:

• Over the next five decades, the consumption of paper and paperboard will grow more rapidly than any other category of forest product.
• Real prices of softwood sawtimber and softwood lumber rise steadily from current levels until 2010~2015, then stabilize or fall in subsequent periods.
• The national implications of public timber harvest reductions in the West will be lessened by significant interregional substitution, including increased imports from Canada. Over the projection period, western regions will continue to lose market share to eastern regions because of rising relative wod costs.
• The South will be the major source of any expansion in softwood timber supply for the next 50 years, If high planting rates in the South continue through the 1990s, product and timber prices will stabilize, and in some cases decline, after 2020.
• Hardwoods will increase in importance relative to softwoods in total U.S. harvest as a result of increased use in lumber, fiber products, and fuelwood. In this expansion, the North has the potential to match the South in contributions to incremental fiber output.
• By 2040, the U.S. will remain a net forest products importer, but the gap between imports and exports on a volume basis will decline.

Haynes, Richard W., Darius M. Adams, and John R. Mills. 1995. The 1993 RPA timber assessment update. Gen. Tech. Rept. RM~259. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. 66 p.