Periodic timber inventories in the Southeastern United States indicate that net annual growth of softwood timber there has peaked and turned downward after a long upward trend. The most pronounced declines have been measured in the growth of the yellow pines on nonindustrial private forest land, which accounts for about 69 percent of the timberland in this five-state region (Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia). These declines are important because trends in net volume growth strongly influence amounts of timber available for future harvest. This report documents some early investigations into the pattern of the growth reduction conducted by the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Research Work Unit at the Southeastern Forest Experiment Station.