Celebrating 100 years of forest science: an abridged history of the Southern Research Station

Abstract

In 2021, the Southern Research Station celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding as the Southern and Appalachian Forest Experiment Stations. This volume includes 20 contributed articles on the history of these stations, spanning nearly the entire century. These include biographies on former and current staff members; essays on how the stations were organized, staffed, and led; early incarnations of the botany, forest survey, genetics, statistics, and publication programs; the establishment and operation of some experimental forests; and several accounts of how these stations’ research supported local communities and industries. Although far from complete, these articles help illuminate the people, places, and programs that helped restore and rebuild southern forests, forestry, and associated communities into the dynamic and vibrant region experienced today.

Titles contained within Celebrating 100 years of forest science: an abridged history of the Southern Research Station

• A history of the Alexandria Forestry Center Herbarium
• Unlikely pioneers in the Southern Forest Experiment Station: Tomatsu “Tommy” Kohara and Jasper Burnes
• Closure crises for the Crossett Experimental Forest
• The 1931 search for a new experimental forest in the Ouachita National Forest
• A confidential case study on the selective logging options for the virgin pine forests of the Crossett Lumber Company
• A brief biography of Clement Mesavage
• The first publication series of the Southern Forest Experiment Station
• Some early developers of statistical and mensurational techniques at the Southern Forest Experiment Station
• The first Southern Forest Survey
• An abbreviated administrative and organizational history of the Southern Forest Experiment Station
• Wakeley’s early history of southern forest genetics
• Coweeta’s influences reach beyond its watershed boundary
• The 1932 Urania Bible
• A brief and biased memoir of the Southern Institute of Forest Genetics
• An incomplete roster of the Southern, Appalachian, and Southeastern Forest Experiment Stations, 1921-1995
• Margaret Stoughton Abell: the first female forester of the U.S. Forest Service comes to the Appalachian Experiment Station.
• The 1936 Long Branch plots at Bent Creek: the first statistically designed study of the Appalachian Forest Experiment Station
• A Depression-era relief program on Bent Creek Experimental Forest yielded firewood and a new study
• “Mr. Forest Service”: Wilbur R. Mattoon and the reforestation of the South.
• Earl H. Frothingham: portrait of a pioneering researcher and the first director of the Appalachian Forest Experiment Station.

Citation

Bragg, Don C., ed. 2023. Celebrating 100 years of forest science: an abridged history of the Southern Research Station. Gen. Tech. Rep. SRS-272. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Research Station. 298 p.