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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CompassLive Articles Featuring the Center's Research
Fish Hosts for Freshwater Mussels: New Method to Identify Large River Host Fish
Women In Science: Zanethia Barnett
Coastal Plain Fish Diversity and Introduced Small Wood: Darters and other fishes benefit
Vernal Crayfish Life History and Habitat Use: Southern population sample
Rediscovering the Yalobusha Rivulet Crayfish: Enigmatic Crustacean Found in New Localities
Farms Ponds Conserve Groundwater in MS
Pondberry Seeks Sunlight: Endangered Species Highly Tolerant of Soil Flooding
Generalist No More: Yazoo Darter as a Microhabitat Specialist
Air, Water, and Wavelets: Wavelet analysis and the impact of rising air temperatures on streams
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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 AwardsResearch foresters Emile Gardiner and Steve Meadows, Center for Bottomland Hardwoods Research participated in the 2018 Forestland Stewards Stakeholder Forum sponsored by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and International Paper in Vicksburg, MS. Meadows gave a presentation and took part in a panel discussion entitled “Bottomland Hardwood Management: How to Go Bigger for Wildlife and Water.” Gardiner worked with land owners, a private for-profit conservation company, and staff of NRCS to conduct, and facilitate discussions during a tour of three former agricultural sites that were being restored to bottomland hardwood forests. The NFWF and IP have partnered to restore forests in four regions: the low country of North and South Carolina the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee and Alabama, the piney woods on the Louisiana-Texas border, and most recently, the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley.
Zanethia Barnett, natural resource specialist, Center for Bottomland Hardwoods Research and colleagues from the University of Mississippi participated in the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Water Ways Exhibition in Clarksdale, MS by introducing guests to life in the Lower Mississippi River. Guests of all ages toured the exhibit and participated in the hands on presentation. Guests handled aquatic invertebrates, looked at invertebrates and zooplankton under microscopes, learned about the biology and ecology of freshwater ecosystems, and sampled river organisms. Zanethia was also the invited speaker at the recent University of Mississippi Women in STEM fall dinner.
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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.)
