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An approach for delivering research results in the Southern United States

Informally Refereed

Abstract

The USDA Forest Service research and development program (R&D) consists of five regional stations, a forest products laboratory, and a tropical forestry institute that, taken together, comprise the largest network of natural resource research organizations in the world. Within this network is the Southern Research Station, which serves a 500-million acre (202-million hectare) area stretching from eastern Texas to northern Virginia, roughly the distance from Helsinki to Rome. Established in 1926, the Southern Station employs approximately 135 paneled research scientists and a support staff of nearly 300 professional, technical, and administrative employees. An annual budget of about $50 million supports these employees in forestry sciences laboratories, experimental forests, and natural resource departments on university campuses. Their disciplines range from siliviculture to hydrology to economics.

Until late in the 20th century, the terms research and publications were synonymous. Like their university colleagues, our scientists were evaluated on the quality and number of their publications. Supporting their efforts were staffs dedicated to technical editing, styling manuscripts and submitting them to journals, and publishing the manuscripts that the scientific journals did not want, either because they were too lengthy or because they had limited scientific value.

Citation

Whitlock, Carol; Rauscher, H. Michael. 2008. An approach for delivering research results in the Southern United States. Communicating Forest Science: A Daily Task. Proceedings of the International Meeting Communicating through the media – why and how. IUFRO Occasional Paper 20. 18-23
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/29383