The Southern Forest Futures Project is two-year effort that will use technical forecasts and expert analysis to provide forest managers, policy makers, and science leaders with the clearest possible understanding of the potential long term implications of changes in southern forests.

The Project will use a two phased assessment process to accomplish this. The forecasting phase will develop several possible future scenarios for the entire South. For each scenario, forecasts will project land uses and forest conditions for the region at a fine spatial resolution and spanning 50 years forward. Public input during the scoping phase will help identify what those scenarios should be as well as what resource changes need to be evaluated.

The forecast phase will include construction of scenarios that represent important forces of change for forests of the region. It will use these scenarios to drive a loosely coupled set of three models that simulate key processes of forest use, dynamics and ecosystem services.

The analysis phase will evaluate the implications of these forecasted conditions for each of six subregions and include analysis of subregion-specific questions.

Depending on the results of the forecasting phase, the analysis phase will likely analyze the implications for ecosystem structure, ecosystem services, forest management, forest restoration strategies, and other subregion-specific questions