Tag: Tools

Which Bat Is That? The Smell Will Tell

by Stephanie Siegel, USDA Forest Service contract science writer  • 
For the first time, people can distinguish one bat species from another by smell alone. Scientists from the USDA Forest Service and Arkansas State University found that a new, portable electronic nose (e-nose) device is capable of distinguishing between bat species by their smells. This study is part of a larger effort to help bats…  More 

Science in Practice Webinars

by Jennifer Moore Myers, SRS Science Communications  • 
Last year, USDA Forest Service scientist Stephanie Laseter launched a webinar series called Science in Practice. In her role as a liaison between the Southern Research Station and Southern Region of the National Forest System, Laseter links SRS researchers and their recent findings with land managers in the Region and across the Southern Group of…  More 

Impacts of Urbanization on U.S. Watersheds

by Casey Conrad, SRS Science Communications Intern  • 
Urbanization is inevitable with a growing population, but what consequences does this have for the water we rely on? Cheng Li, a former visiting scholar at North Carolina State University from the Guangdong Academy of Sciences, along with USDA Forest Service scientists Ge Sun, Peter Caldwell, and Erika Mack modeled the effects of urbanization on…  More 

QUIC-Fire: A Fast Tool for Prescribed Fire Planning

by Kim Crider, SRS Science Communications  • 
Predicting fire behavior is complicated. Current modeling tools work to balance the interplay between many different factors including weather conditions and vegetation structure. Yet these tools are often underutilized because they require high-performance computing resources. Rodman Linn from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, with expertise from SRS researchers Scott Goodrick and Joe O’Brien and additional…  More 

Photo Guide to Fuel Loads in the Southern Appalachians

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
A new photo guide shows fuel loads in the Southern Appalachian mountains. A team of four experts wrote the guide: Adam Coates, a professor at Virginia Tech; Tom Waldrop, a USDA Forest Service research forester who is now retired; Todd Hutchinson, a research ecologist at the Northern Research Station; and Helen Mohr, an SRS forester…  More 

Water Supply from Southern State and Private Forest Lands

by Jennifer Moore Myers, SRS Science Communications  • 
Forests provide the most stable and highest quality water supplies among all land uses. A report by the Southern Research Station of the USDA Forest Service quantifies the role of state and private forest lands (SPF) in providing drinking water supply across the southern United States. About half of the South’s land area is forested,…  More 

Assessing Surface Water Quality in the Mississippi Delta

by Jennifer Moore Myers, SRS Science Communications  • 
USDA Forest Service scientists are measuring surface water quality in the Big Sunflower River watershed of the Mississippi Delta to better understand eutrophication of the Gulf of Mexico. Extensive crop production contributes nutrients and suspended solids and leads to concerns about low dissolved oxygen and pathogens. Ying Ouyang, Ted Leininger, and colleagues monitored water quality…  More 

New Directions for Fire Ecology Research

by Ivan Garcia, SRS Science Communications Intern  • 
Fire is a complicated process that affects forests in diverse ways. Current methods for predicting fire effects on forests still largely rely on past observations rather than a deep understanding of how fire interacts with a forest environment. In order to more fully understand fire’s effect on an ecosystem, wildland fire must be viewed as…  More 

E-Noses Detect Emerald Ash Borer Larvae

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
Electronic noses are sensitive to a vast suite of volatile organic compounds that every living organism emits. A new USDA Forest Service study shows that e-noses can detect emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) larvae lurking under the bark – an early, noninvasive detection method. “The results were quite spectacular,” says Dan Wilson, a research plant…  More 

Satellite Mapping of Forest Disturbances Can Help When Field Efforts Are Restricted

by Lars Pomara, Eastern Threat Center  • 
A large number of tornadoes struck the Southeast in the spring of 2020. Ordinarily, aerial surveillance and field crews would assess forest damage after windstorms and other disturbances, but the COVID-19 pandemic has limited those operations. USDA Forest Service scientists are showing that, with recent technological advances, disturbance impacts can nonetheless be rapidly mapped at…  More