The forests of southern New England, 2007

This report summarizes the results of the fifth forest inventory of the forests of Southern New England, defined as Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Inventory and analysis program. Information on forest attributes, ownership, land use change, carbon, timber products, forest health, and statistics and quality assurance of data collection are included. There are 5.1 million acres of forest land across the region; 60 percent of this forest land is in Massachusetts, 33 percent in Connecticut, and 7 percent in Rhode Island. This amount has decreased by 5 percent since the last inventory was completed in 1998. There are 2.6 billion trees on this forest land that have a total volume of 12.6 billion cubic feet. Red maple and eastern white pine are the most common species in terms of both numbers of trees and volume. Fifty percent of the forest land is classified as the oak-hickory forest type.