Tag: Hydrology

Forests and Water in a Changing Environment

by Zoё Hoyle, SRS Science Delivery  • 
U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) scientists played leading roles in the 4th International Conference on Forests and Water in a Changing Environment held in Kelowna, British Columbia, July 6 to 9. SRS project leader Jim Vose (Center for Integrated Forest Science) and research hydrologist Ge Sun (Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center) helped establish…  More 

Helping Aquatic Wildlife Managers Navigate the River of Streamflow Models

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Delivery  • 
Streams in the southeastern U.S. are among the most ecologically rich in the world, but climate change, land cover change, and withdrawals threaten the health of their aquatic ecosystems. “Understanding how changes in streamflow affect aquatic wildlife is critical,” says U.S. Forest Service scientist Peter Caldwell. “Many states in the Southeast recognize the urgency of the issue and…  More 

Riparian Buffer Trees Offer Unexpected Benefits

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Delivery  • 
Trees take up large quantities of water through their roots, but 99 percent or more of that water moves through the roots, trunks, and branches, ultimately evaporating from small openings called stomata, which are usually located on leaves. There are many ways to measure the movement of this water, although most methods measure the amount…  More 

Could Forest Thinning Help Ease Water Shortages in the United States?

by Stephanie Worley Firley  • 
Planning for the future of the nation’s water resources is more important now than ever before as severe drought grips the West, affecting heavily populated areas and critical agricultural regions. Forests generally yield huge quantities of water—much more than crops or grasslands—but also use a lot of water during the growing season, so some land…  More 

Bringing Bottomland Forests Back to the Mississippi Alluvial Valley

by Zoё Hoyle, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
The vast Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV) that stretches along the Mississippi River from southern Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico once supported 24 million acres of bottomland and wetland forest — rich stands of oak, gum, ash, hickory, baldcypress, and water tupelo. The hydrology of the original floodplain was drastically altered by flood-control levees built…  More 

New Report and Interactive Map Detail Best Management Practices for States

by Adapted from NASF news release  • 
In recognition of Earth Day, the National Association for State Foresters (NASF) has released a report on forestry best management practices (BMPs) for water quality, along with an interactive map detailing practices in each state. State forestry agencies have been developing BMPs since the 1970s, building a reliable set of standards that help protect local water…  More 

Headwaters to Estuaries: Advances in Watershed Science and Management

by Zoё Hoyle, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
On March 2-5, 81 scientists, managers, and stakeholders met in North Charleston, South Carolina, to present and discuss the latest research on watershed science and management. U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station scientist Carl Trettin served as conference chair and host  for the 5th Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds, which took a national…  More 

Mississippi Alluvial Valley Forests: The Next 50 Years

by Zoё Hoyle, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
The Southern Forest Futures Project (SFFP) started in 2008 as an effort to study and understand the various forces reshaping the forests across the 13 states of the Southeast. Chartered by the U.S. Forest Service Southern Region and Southern Research Station (SRS) along with the Southern Group of State Foresters, the project examined a variety…  More 

Sunlight to the Seagrasses

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
Just off Florida’s 8,000 miles of coastline and tidal areas, in shallow sunlit waters, over 2 million acres of seagrass meadows waft in the ocean currents. Besides providing food and habitat for manatees, sea turtles, shellfish, and other animals, seagrasses protect coasts from erosion and store vast quantities of carbon dioxide. “Seagrasses grow off the…  More 

A Future for Freeze-Tolerant Eucalyptus in the South?

by Zoё Hoyle, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
Recently published research by U.S. Forest Service scientists provides important first-time analyses of the potential impacts of introducing plantations of freeze-tolerant Eucalyptus into the South. Eucalyptus, a fast-growing tree native to Australia and Indonesia, is planted across large areas of Asia, Africa, and South America as a major source of hardwood fiber for paper and…  More