Category: Forest Inventory & Analysis

The State of U.S. Forests

by Sonja Oswalt, SRS FIA Forester  • 
The U.S. forest products industry accounts for approximately four percent of the nation’s total manufacturing GDP, producing over $200 billion in products every year. To keep tabs on the condition and status of America’s forest resources over time, the USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis Program compiles the official estimates for all public and private forest lands in…  More 

How Tree Diversity Affects Invasive Forest Pests

by Jennifer Moore Myers, SRS Science Communications  • 
“Invasive insects and diseases pose both ecological and economic threats to our forest ecosystems,” says Qinfeng Guo, USDA Forest Service research ecologist. Guo is the lead author of a broad-scale study of U.S. forest data that examines the relationship between the number of native tree species and the number of nonnative forest pests. Across their…  More 

Trees in Protected Areas

by Remi Shaull-Thompson, SRS Science Communications Intern  • 
Conservation goals range anywhere from aesthetics to survival. Among the most important of those is ensuring that an ecosystem is resilient to disturbances and provides as many different functions as possible. According to an assessment by a USDA Forest Service cooperating researcher, those qualities can be quantified using two metrics: rarity and evolutionary distinctiveness. Rarity…  More 

Workshop on Southern Experimental Forest Network

by Jennifer Moore Myers, SRS Science Communications, and Stephanie Laseter, EF network coordinator  • 
More than 20 representatives from SRS Experimental Forests (EF), Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA), SRS leadership, and partner sites met on April 30 in Little Rock, Arkansas. “Their primary objective was to build on previous efforts, such as the field tours, and develop an implementation framework and plan for the network,” says Stephanie Laseter, EF…  More 

Family Forests Are the Ties That Bind the Landscape

by Stephanie Worley Firley, Eastern Threat Center  • 
Family forests have an enormous capacity to provide ecosystem services such as clean air and water, timber and nontimber forest products, wildlife habitat, and scenic beauty and recreation — benefits that stretch far beyond property lines. According to USDA Forest Service research, sustaining these services depends on not only the condition of individual family forests…  More 

The State of the Nation’s Forests

by Stephanie Worley Firley, Eastern Threat Center  • 
Forests are constantly changing with weather, disturbance, and conversion to other land uses, but how do we know if year-to-year changes are just a one-off or part of a larger shift? Annual summaries of forest health are key to our understanding, say the editors and authors that produced Forest Health Monitoring: National Status, Trends, and…  More 

Protecting Hardwood Resources

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
Trees provide clean air and water, wildlife habitat, and beauty. Trees are also vital to local economies. “In 2015, Kentucky had 193 hardwood sawmills,” says USDA Forest Service research forester Tom Brandeis. “That same year, Tennessee had 226 hardwood sawmills.” Each state produced more than 700 million board feet of hardwood lumber in 2015. Higher…  More 

Do Roads Drive Forest Plant Invasions?

by Stephanie Worley Firley, Eastern Threat Center  • 
Roads provide a means for moving people and products, but they can also allow hitchhiking organisms to spread. Some exotic invasive plants thrive on the disturbance created by road construction that displaces native plants. However, a new study led by Kurt Riitters, U.S. Forest Service research ecologist with the SRS Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center, found…  More 

FIA Update on Alabama’s Forests

by Jennifer Moore Myers, SRS Science Communications  • 
In the forests of Alabama you’ll find longleaf pine woodlands, bottomland swamps, sinkholes, and springs. You’ll see fox squirrels, indigo snakes, gopher tortoises, and pitcher plants. The Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the U.S. Forest Service collects field data on forest resources across the state, visiting around 700 of the more than 5,600…  More 

State Line Meeting with Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi

by Stephanie Laseter, R8-SRS Liaison  • 
On August 17 and 18, state foresters from Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, along with their staffs and personnel from the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS), gathered in Biloxi, MS. This was the third State Line Meeting for state foresters Wade Dubea of Louisiana and Charlie Morgan of Mississippi, and the first for Alabama State…  More