Forest products from Latin America. An almanac of the state of the knowledge and the state of the art

Abstract

In 1985, the U.S. Congress mandated a program commonly called the Caribbean Initiative. To fulfill their portion of this Initiative, the USDA Forest Service developed a ?Program for Tropical Forestry in Latin America and the Caribbean.? This document is part of the Forest Service program, and it was funded by the legislation for the Caribbean Initiative. This document is based on an extensive survey (nearly 3,000 documents) of the world literature pertaining to Latin American woods and their use. It contains a discussion of the resource, the literature, the state of the knowledge, and the state of the art in actual practice, by primary and secondary processing and by product areas within the processing options. A discussion about new initiatives and programs that are needed in research, technology transfer, and training is included. In addition, lists of references, the bibliography, and limited lists of the tree species are discussed in the literature.