All Articles Page 94

How to Grow American Chestnut

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
American chestnut thrived in eastern North American forests for thousands of years, but in the 20th century, an exotic fungus almost eliminated the species. To date, chestnut restoration has mostly meant breeding blight-resistant trees. Now, thanks to a collaboration between the U.S. Forest Service, The American Chestnut Foundation, and institutions like the University of Tennessee…  More 

Community Forest Monitoring in Ghana

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
We celebrate the FAO International Day of Forests with a story from Ghana. U.S. Forest Service scientists are playing a role in restoring and conserving African tropical forest land in Africa by training local communities to monitor their own forests. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), deforestation in Africa occurs at roughly twice…  More 

Moving Harper’s Beauty Off Road

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
The first week of March found a team of plant biologists down on their knees in a highway right-of-way in the Florida Panhandle, searching for Harper’s beauty, one of Florida’s rarest native plants. A perennial lily with a solitary yellow flower and iris-like leaves, Harper’s beauty (Harperocallis flava) is listed as federally endangered and found…  More 

Wood Industry Trends in the South Made Easy

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
An online tool developed the by U.S. Forest Service quickly reveals the economic impacts of wood-related industries in the states of the South. The South is often referred to as the “wood basket of the Nation,” and wood-related industries contribute to the economies of all 13 southern states to varying degrees. For analysis purposes, these…  More 

Eastern Threat Center Co-Organizes Special Landscape Ecology Event

by Stephanie Worley Firley, Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center  • 
The term “landscape ecology” may have different meanings for different people. That’s because the science of landscape ecology encompasses many subjects, perspectives, interactions, and scales. “It is about people, ecosystems, species, energy, pollutants, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing, modeling, disturbance, flows, conservation, and many, many other things,” according to the US-Regional Association of…  More 

History Matters

by Nancy Koerth, SRS Southern Pine Ecology and Management unit  • 
  “I received a call from a woman looking for evidence that her grandfather worked at the Crossett Experimental Forest in the early 1940s,” said Jim Guldin, project leader for U.S. Forest Service Southern Pine Ecology unit. When her grandfather could not be found in the daily journals kept on the experimental forest, Guldin realized…  More 

Oaks in the Red

by Julia Kirschman,SRS Upland Hardwood Ecology and Management unit  • 
U.S. Forest Service and university researchers are working together to understand the escalating decline and death of oaks—especially red oaks—in the Ozark Highlands of Arkansas and Missouri. Research forest ecologist Marty Spetich from the Forest Service Southern Research Station and scientists from the Forest Service Northern Research Station (NRS), Mississippi State University, and the University of Missouri team…  More 

Cave Climates and White-Nose Syndrome

by Nancy Koerth, SRS Southern Pine Ecology and Management unit  • 
  White-nose syndrome, caused by the fungus Geomyces destructans, has decimated bat populations throughout eastern North America. Recent estimates show that 6 to7 million bats have succumbed to white-nose syndrome. This fungus thrives in the cool, moist conditions found in many caves and mines where bats may also hibernate. Roger W. Perry, a research wildlife…  More 

Electronic-Nose Article Wins 2013 Best Paper Award

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
  Dan Wilson, a U.S Forest Service research plant pathologist with the Southern Research Station Center for Bottomland Hardwoods Research, just received notice that his 2009 review article “Applications and Advances in Electronic-Nose Technologies” has been awarded first prize for the Sensors Best Paper Award in 2013 in the review article category, among all papers…  More 

Amazing Town Ants Arrive in Shreveport

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
The U.S. Forest Service recently installed a diorama called The Amazing Town Ant” at the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum (LSEM) in Shreveport, Louisiana. Researchers and staff from the Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) Insects, Diseases, and Invasive Plants unit in nearby Pineville worked together to build a mock town ant colony, a complicated structure which…  More