Arkansas’s Forests, 2020

In 2020, 18.9 million acres (55 percent) of Arkansas’s total forest land was classified as forested by the Forest Inventory and Analysis program, of which 18.4 million acres were timberland and 494,400 acres were reserved forest land. More than 80 percent of Arkansas’s forests are privately owned, 13 percent were in National Forests, and 3 percent in other public lands. The 2020 estimates revealed increases in both hardwood and softwood tree volume, with total volume up over 10 percent since 2015. Softwood volume was reported at 15.2 billion cubic feet, while hardwood volume was 20.8 billion cubic feet. In 2020, loblolly pine was the predominant softwood species, accounted for over 9.2 billion cubic feet (26 percent) of volume. For hardwoods, the white oak group contained the most volume, 5.4 billion cubic feet, followed closely by red oaks with 5.3 billion cubic feet. Sweetgum and hickory species each accounted for 2.3 billion cubic feet. In 2020, 952 million cubic feet of softwood volume was produced each year, a 21 percent increase since 2015. Conversely, 566 million cubic feet of softwood volume were removed each year in harvest operations. Annual mortality of softwood and hardwood trees averaged 75.7 and 226.2 million cubic feet, respectively. Volume harvested for softwood products for use by the State’s 103 primary wood mills was 487.4 million cubic feet. Volume of total roundwood harvested for products trended upward for softwoods. Hardwood output volume showed more volatility and trended downward overall, from 131.2 million cubic feet in 2015 to 75.9 million cubic feet in 2020.