Articles

Riparian and groundwater-dependent ecosystems (GDEs) in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest provide critical ecosystem services but are threatened by multiple interacting stressors.

Since the Forest Service’s inception, agency scientists have worked shoulder to shoulder with forest managers to support sustainable and efficient timber production. The Forest Service provides authoritative, nationwide data on the status and trends of forest resources and wood processing facilities.

A tribute to Yasmeen Sands, a member of the Forest Service family for 25 years. She wrote the stories and communicated to the world the incredible wonder and knowledge that the Pacific Northwest Research Station offers. Her 25 years helped build the station, tell the Forest Service story, foster the public affairs community, and shine a light on the extraordinary work we do together to advance understanding of forest science.

The Climate Smart Restoration Tool estimates seed transfer distance and vegetative transitions for current and mid-century climate by using current and future climate data, coupled with vegetative inventories.

Simulations that incorporate ecological resilience and invasion resistance into benefit-cost analysis of fuel treatments can help land managers to plan and implement cost effective fuel treatments in sagebrush ecosystems.

In Hawai'i, new efforts aim to increase the availability of native, site-specific, genetically appropriate seed to restore areas burned by wildfires.

At the Fernow Experimental Forest, scientists examined how prescribed fire, deer exclusion, and canopy gap creation applied individually and in combination influenced seed bank diversity and composition in an Appalachian hardwood forest. Combinations of all three disturbances led to a more unique seedbank community, and prescribed fire had the strongest independent effect on seed abundance.

Recent experiments show that even "fire-safe" cigarettes can start a wildfire.

Just in time for National Grasslands Week, the Microsoft "AI for Good" program announced that StockSmart, a livestock grazing management tool, will receive financial and technical support to enhance the tool’s capability. The award includes Microsoft Azure cloud computing credits and the opportunity to work with scientists from the AI for Good Lab, which will enable the winning team of researchers from Washington State University, the University of Arizona, and the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station to further develop and enhance StockSmart for ranchers, range specialists, and others who use it.

Huge quantities of data on prescribed fire are being collected and will eventually inform next-generation models of fuel, fire behavior, fire effects and smoke. The work will improve prescribed fire planning tools and aims to make prescribed fires easier and safer to implement.

Collaborative research involving the Hoosier National Forest, Northern Research Station, and Purdue University revealed that regenerating oak using shelterwood and one prescribed burn on drier, less productive sites could help return oaks to the landscape in a cost-effective way.

The Athens Prescribed Fire Science Laboratory of the USDA Forest Service is a mesoscale combustion facility dedicated to advancing prescribed fire science. The facility allows the team and their partners to make new discoveries about the basic physics of fire behavior, spread, and smoke. Making prescribed fires safer is a goal that brings participants together.

The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers awarded USDA Forest Service Emeritus Research Engineer Bill Elliot a 2025 Superior Paper Award for his publication, “Runoff and Erosion Following a Prescribed Fire on a Sagebrush-Steppe Rangeland in Idaho, USA.”Rangelands provide water filtration, biodiversity, and are vital for wildlife and livestock.This research can help manag...

An updated chapter within the 2024 Remote Sensing Handbook describes ongoing global challenges facing rangeland management, how practitioners are addressing them, and includes advances in remote sensing capabilities.

Researchers studying the girdle-herbicide method reported an overall success rate of 55 percent in containing oak wilt spread. In clusters of four or fewer infected trees, the success rate was up to 81 percent effective.

Long-term water quality monitoring at Hubbard Brook led to the discovery of acid rain in the White Mountain National Forest and informed solutions that have reduced it over time.

From 1990 to 2020, the total wildland-urban-interface increased by 31% in area, and the number of total wildland-urban-interface houses increased by 46%, from 30 million to 44 million. Expanding wildland urban interface growth places more homes at risk to wildfire and also increases disturbance to forests.

A new study reveals how the data from everyday smartphones can help us better understand and balance the needs of wildlife and recreationists.

Using data from 2013 to 2015, researchers looked at precipitation, streamflow, water turbidity, and suspended-sediment concentration on the Colorado Front Range.

WindNinja is an open-source high-resolution wind model developed for wildland fire. It is used on nearly every large fire incident in the United States. WindNinja was recently updated to Version 3.12.0 with several new features and bug fixes.