Articles

New research highlights the importance of classifying pests as specialists or generalists. The researchers compared two approaches and found that the specialist-generalist continuum is the most useful.

Using the LANDIS PRO forest landscape model, NRS researchers analyzed how current and alternative management practices on public and private land can influence the balance of oak and maple species over a 150-year period in southeastern Ohio.

Fire scientists and practitioners are working together to coproduce new tools for managing wildfires and making prescribed fires safer and easier to implement. Prescribed fires can reduce hazardous fuels, and many ecosystems are fire-adapted which means they require regular fire to stay healthy.

Scientists showed that WindNinja, a modeling program currently used to predict wind patterns during wildfires, can also identify dangerous wind conditions near the ground that may affect smokejumpers’ ability to land safely.

Read a new Science You Can Use about how two recent research studies uncovered some of the key factors that increase the performance of tree seedlings planted after wildfire.

Researchers from the Eastern Innovation Landscape Network are leaders in a multi-agency, multidisciplinary project to accelerate the development and implementation of wildland fire and fuels science to inform fire, land, and community decision-makers.

SRS scientists, in collaboration with regional fire management experts, developed tools that estimate wildfire risk across the Southeast by fire frequency and severity and the socioeconomic vulnerability of nearby communities.

Decision makers can anticipate dramatic increases in wildfire suppression spending in the rest of the 21st century. Projected changes are mainly due to the effects of a changing climate, requiring increased spending to protect communities and natural resources from higher overall rates of wildfires.

While harvesting wood from forests can reduce the carbon they store, these demands also encourage more forest planting. Faster-growing planted forests are able to close the carbon gap.

Biochar can be used as a soil amendment, for carbon sequestration, and for removal of heavy metals from wastewater or contaminated soils. SRS is generating biochar from southern hardwoods and evaluating its chemical and physical properties in an effort to create sustainable new markets for small-diameter wood.

Future Forests: Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change explores how different forest ecosystems around the world are affected by climate change and how these forests, in turn, influence climate patterns.

A team of SRS researchers partnered with North Carolina State University to investigate what factors were most associated with tree mortality after a "hot drought."

SRS researchers conducted a socio-ecological study examining resident responses to affordable housing built near urban forest patches.

SRS scientists used the Forest Dynamics Model to project the area of mature and old growth forests on federal lands and to assess climate threats to these forests under varying climate futures.

Contrary to previous assumptions, woody encroachment patterns can largely be predicted by a null model based only on steady tree population growth, suggesting that modern increases in woodland density may be a result of long-term population expansion and recovery rather than anthropogenic land-use changes.

An interdisciplinary team has begun a multiyear treatment and monitoring study to support pinyon-juniper core woodland vulnerable to intensifying wildfire.

More than 250 members of the western North Carolina community, including many forest landowners, gathered at Highland Brewery in Asheville in December 2024 to discuss the challenges facing local forests after Hurricane Helene.

By 1950, the American chestnut, once the "King of the Appalachian Forest," was extirpated. Organizations like the American Chestnut Foundation are working to restore the species by introducing blight resistance from Chinese chestnut through advanced backcross breeding techniques. Backcross breeding can only succeed when the chromosomes of both species are compatible. Because Chinese-American ch...

Culverts are part of the transportation infrastructure, but many are vulnerable to floods.A new study uses long-term, high-resolution streamflow data from 1387 watersheds on the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire and five experimental forests to evaluate how culvert design, size, and surrounding topography affect their vulnerability to flooding.This study is part of a larger body o...

Brown spot needle blight, caused by a fungal pathogen called Lecanosticta acicola, has been present in the U.S. for more than 100 years. Two major outbreaks occurred recently, including an outbreak affecting more than a million acres of loblolly pine in the Southeast and an outbreak in eastern white pine in the Northeast. The pathogen also infects other species and is present across the globe.A...