Restoring and Managing Longleaf Pine Ecosystems (SRS-4158)

Initiated in 2007, the Unit is a team of scientists and support staff whose mission is to provide knowledge and strategies for restoring, managing, and sustaining longleaf pine ecosystems in the southeastern U.S. Unit scientists work on two overarching research problems. They design and carry out research studies that seek to solve these problems or overcome related limitations to our knowledge of longleaf pine ecosystems. The Unit works with partners to provide knowledge and technologies needed to successfully restore and manage these ecosystems which are increasingly affected by a variety of human and natural influences in times of environmental stress and cultural and climatic change. The problem areas are as follows:

• Providing fundamental physiological knowledge needed to understand the processes that affect longleaf pine seedling production, establishment, and growth and development.
• Providing ecological information about population and community processes that affect restoration of longleaf pine woodlands and at risk native plant species.
• Providing practices, strategies, and models that quantify and predict the influence of management on maintaining and restoring longleaf pine ecosystems.

Experimental Forests

• Escambia Experimental Forest
• Palustris Experimental Forest