All Articles Page 89

Removing Privet Helps Restore Native Bee Populations

by Sarah Farmer, Science Delivery Group  • 
When plants travel the world, they escape the checks and balances of their ancestral ecosystems and can multiply without bounds, competing with native plants for light, nutrients, and water. Do non-native invasive plants also disrupt native bee populations? Jim Hanula, research entomologist with the SRS Insects, Diseases and Invasive Plants unit, explored this question by comparing bee…  More 

Park Access and Environmental Equity

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
 Forest Service Researcher Looks at Changing Demographics in the South When the term “environmental justice” is used, most people think of the siting of environmental hazards, but environmental justice also includes questions about access to environmental goods. For those who live in towns and cities, access to parks is one such environmental good. Little is…  More 

An Evening Burn to Restore Mountain Forests

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) and the Southern Research Station(SRS) have been cooperating for over 10 years to study prescribed burning in the Southern Appalachian Mountains on state-owned Green River Game Land in Polk County, NC.  The afternoon and evening of January 31, crews burned study plots on the Green River Game Land…  More 

The Water Web: More about WaSSI

by Stephanie Worley Firley, EFETAC  • 
Water quantity and quality issues affect every living thing on Earth, yet, until recently, methods for projecting possible future water supply scenarios were fairly limited. In the late 1990s, Southern Research Station (SRS) scientists participating in several national-scale assessments of climate change science and climate-related impacts discovered “a frustrating lack of landscape-scale, integrated ecosystem models from…  More 

UCS Uses EFETAC Tool to Analyze Power Plant Impacts on Water

by Stephanie Worley Firley, EFETAC  • 
Power plants across the United States are contributing to water stress and impacting water quality according to a new report released by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).    To analyze current and future water demand and supplies for the report, Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants: Electricitys Thirst for a Precious Resource, UCS researchers used results…  More 

Faces of the Forest: SRS Mike Ward Featured Nationally

by Teresa Jackson, Science Delivery Group  • 
At 83, he’s still going strong… Neal “Mike” Ward By all accounts, Neal “Mike” Ward has more than earned a life of leisure. After all, he served in the Korean War as a front line fighter and as an Army journalist. After the military, he returned home to New Jersey, where he used his writing skills…  More 

CAFMS Hosts Smoke in the Mountains Workshop

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
Smoke Management in the Southern Appalachians February 28, 2012, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Bent Creek Training Facility, Asheville, NC Organized by the Consortium of Appalachian Fire Managers and Scientists (CAFMS), this course will examine some of the challenges managers face when trying to manage the smoke from prescribed fire in mountainous terrain. A primary focus will…  More 

The Urban Forest Inventory in Tennessee

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
Trees in cities can contribute significantly to human health and environmental quality. Previously, there’s been little known about the urban forest resource in the State of Tennessee and what it contributes locally and regionally in terms of ecology, economy, and social well-being. In an effort to better understand the urban forest resource in the State of Tennessee…  More 

How Many People Hike the AT Every Year?

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
The Appalachian National Scenic Trail (AT) stretches 2,175 miles from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia. Each spring, thousands of people set out to hike the entire trail, and innumerable others hike sections of it throughout the year. Just how to measure the number of people who hike the AT is the subject of a…  More 

SRS Signs MOU with Alabama A&M University

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
On January 5, SRS Director Rob Doudrick signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Alabama A&M University (AAMU) that reaffirms the commitment of both partners to continue the USDA Forest Service Center of Excellence in Forestry (COE) at AAMU for another five years. Doudrick had an opportunity to meet with four of the students from the COE who expressed…  More