• Shottaffer, James E.
  School of Forest Resources, University of Maine
  
• Shephard, Robert K. Jr.
  School of Forest Resources, University of Maine
  
• Kerr, Ross D.
  School of Forest Resources, University of Maine
  

It is generally recognized that many of the practices employed in forest management and silvicultural experimentation may have an effect on wood quality as well as on tree growth. Perhaps the most common and easily measured property employed by the forester to assess wood quality is wood density, or specific gravity. The association of specific quality with the physical, mechanical, and fiber characteristics of wood is well known, and its influence on pulping practices, pulp yield, and solid wood conversion processes is frequently documented. To the forest scientist, an added advantage in employing specific gravity as a measure of wood quality lies in the fact that it can be estimated from a small sample, such as an increment core, and does not require the removal of the entire tree. Since specific gravity directly reflects the density, or weight per unit volume of wood, the implications of changes in this value in terms of total yield of fiber per acre are not lost on the forest manager. what may be less evident is the fact that relatively small changes in specific gravity may indicate changes of substantial magnitude in physical and mechanical properties of wood. The relationship between the specific gravity of wood and its mechanical properties has been recognized by the wood scientist for many years. Baumann (1922) observed the apparent influence of density on the elastic compliance of wood nearly sixty years ago. subsequent analyses of these relationships have been summarized by Wangaard (1950), Kollman and Cote (1968), The wood Handbook (1974), and Panshin and deZeeuw (1980)