Organizing Science at the
Southern Research Station

Links to the National Forest Research and Development Program

Forest Service Research & Development is currently organized in two ways to support and coordinate Station-level research. One way is through the Deputy Chief’s research staff organization, organized by broad disciplinary groupings. The other is a set of national Strategic Program Areas (SPAs) led by teams of Station and Washington Office personnel. All RWUs are currently and will continue to be connected to a primary staff area. Each RWU contributes to at least one SPA and a majority of RWUs are involved in research relevant to more than one SPA.

The proposed organizational model anticipates the need to more clearly coordinate research in support of SPAs and other national and regional efforts. But because RWUs and scientists are generally assigned to more than one SPA and regional priority, direct assignment of units to these efforts is impractical. Rather, the proposed organizational model treats Problem Areas as the fundamental building blocks of the Station’s research program, and will design packages of Problem Areas to address broad research initiatives. These packages will allow explicit development of multidisciplinary research programs to address broad objectives. Resources can be redeployed to emerging issues by developing new Problem Areas and amending the respective Science Area plans.

Next Section: Appendix 1 - How this alternative meets the desired outcomes
Previous Section:Research Planning