Our Mission: To provide the scientific basis to manage southern bottomland hardwood and wetland forests and associated stream ecosystems for a sustained yield of forest products and other desired values.
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A Selection of our Recent Publications...
A model to estimate hydrological processes and water budget in an irrigation farm pond
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CompassLive Articles Featuring the Center's Research
Air, Water, and Wavelets: Wavelet analysis and the impact of rising air temperatures on streams
Bottomland Hardwoods of the Mid-Atlantic: Update on FIA status and trends
Women in Science: Meet Susie Adams
New Research Natural Areas Website: Facilitating Research & Education on Network of Protected Lands
Mississippi Alluvial Valley Forests: The next 50 years
Freshwater Mussels in Kentucky: New distributional atlas supports conservation efforts
Freshwater Mussels Play a Part in Restoring Their Own Habitat
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Meet our Research Teams...
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Delta Experimental Forest
The 1,044 ha Delta Experimental Forest in Washington County, MS is located near our Southern Hardwoods Laboratory and has provided the backdrop for many Forest Service research studies since its establishment in 1945.
Read more about the Delta Experimental Forest and our research projects in this CompassLive article.
Tallahatchie Experimental Forest
The 1,416-ha Tallahatchie Experimental Forest, located in the Upper Coastal Plain on the Holly Springs National Forest, near Oxford, MS and our Forest Hydrology Laboratory, was created in 1950 to study relationships between mixed pine and hardwood forests, flooding, and soil erosion.
Read more about the Tallahatchie Experimental Forest and our research projects in this CompassLive article.
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News and AwardsA new (05/04/2017) Untamed Science video published on YouTube (Bats Vs. White-nose Syndrome: What We Know!) features Dr. Dan Wilson explaining how his current research using e-Nose technology can provide an early detection system for bats infected with White-nose Syndrome. Each bat species has its own unique smell, and this smell changes when a bat becomes infected. Anna Doty, Dr. Wilson's cooperative post-doctoral research associate through Arkansas State University who is collecting these unique smells from bats in the field, demonstrates the non-invasive technique which involves pulling air from around a captured bat into a bag for later laboratory analysis then releasing the bat unharmed.
Dr. Paul Hamel, Emeritus Research Biologist, was recently honored with the Mississippi Governor's Award of Merit (for 400+ hours) and the President's Volunteer Service Gold Award for his work as a volunteer and member of the Winterville Mounds Association. Winterville Mounds, a National Historic Landmark near Greenville, MS, is one of the largest and best-preserved Indian mound groups in the southeastern United States. Dr. Hamel's many contributions, one of which was cutting and carrying sumach stems from Winterville Mounds to pipe carvers at Pipestone National Monument in Minnesota, were also recognized in the Mississippi Department of Archives and History Spring 2017 edition of The Volunteer Newsletter.
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Mississippi has one of the most diverse crayfish faunas in the world and is home to at least 17 endemic species (meaning they occur nowhere else).
View our Mississippi species list, photo galleries, fact sheets, distribution maps, and more.
Download a free poster featuring over 30 color photos of Mississippi crayfishes.
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First Global Assessment of Freshwater Crayfish Conservation Status
In 2010, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), led by scientists with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), assembled a group of 76 experts, including CBHR's Dr. Susan B. Adams, to apply the IUCN Red List criteria to the conservation assessment of all 590 of the world's freshwater crayfish. Since the southeastern US is one of the global centers of crayfish diversity, Dr. Adams' research with Crayfish in Mississippi and other areas of the South was an integral part of this assessment.
Read more about this project, check the status of a crayfish species, or visit our Crayfishes of Mississippi website.
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Pondberry (Lindera melissifolia)
Pondberry (Lindera melissifolia) is a rarely seen woody plant that grows in seasonally flooded wetlands and on the edges of sinks and ponds in six southern states. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed it as an endangered species in 1986. Much of the land where pondberry previously occurred has been converted to agricultural fields. Drainage and flooding of wetlands and timber cutting have also affected pondberry populations.
As part of a conservation program, it is essential to find all of the existing pondberry populations so that we may follow the growth or decline of the species. CBHR's Guide to Finding Pondberry (Lindera melissifolia) is designed to help both amateurs and professionals correctly identify pondberry throughout the year. If you find a new population of pondberry, please contact us. We will add your information to the database we developed to track pondberry populations in the South.
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Aging Mussel Shells
We've all heard of counting a tree's rings to determine its age, but did you know a similar procedure is used to determine the age of mussel shells?
Learn more about this process by viewing our captioned photo album "Aging Mussel Shells".
(Note: You must open the individual photos to see the explanations displayed below each photo. After you've opened one photo you can use the arrows just below the photo at the bottom right to navigate between photos.)
