Response of Pine Seedlings to Site Selection on Eroded Soils

Pine seedlings have been planted by the millions, during the last decade, as a part of the operations program of the Soil Conservation Service. Although a plantation was usually made primarily as a soil conservation measure, interest often centered in its utilization for one or more other purposes: wildlife cover, shelterbelt, poles, lumber, landscape beautification. The trees were planted in a wide variety of locations: gullies, slides, eroded slopes, spoil banks, borrow pits and others. The variation in site quality has been greater than in site location. All aspects and almost every degree of slope is represented in these plantings as well as wide variations in soil structure, texture, fertility, pH, soil moisture supply, and the climatic factors of temperature, light, humidity and wind. In many plantings the biotic factors seem to exert control. The more important of these are plant competition, plant disease, insects, rodents, grazing animals and man