Treesearch

The USDA Forest Service received $5.447 billion in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, providing substantial funding to support implementation of the agency’s 2022 Wildfire Crisis Strategy between fiscal years 2022 and 2026. This article examines how the agency might enhance local job creation and equity while conducting wildfire risk reduction and ecosystem restoration under the strategy using these funds. It does this by drawing on five key findings from a socioeconomic assessment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) that are applicable today....

The Hawaiian Islands are an isolated archipelago in the Pacific Ocean with diverse forests covering 1.5 million ac—36 percent of Hawaiʻi’s total land area. These forests produce wood for local use and support trade, yet large-scale timber production has never been significant in Hawaiʻi. In contrast, nontimber forest products (NTFPs), have been foundational to the culture and economy of the state throughout history and continue to be elemental to contemporary society. The rich variety of NTFPs sourced from Hawaiian forests can be observed at diverse social events and informal gatherings....

Outdoor programs operating on U.S. public lands introduce a range of activities, settings, and therapies for veterans experiencing posttraumatic stress, injuries, or disabilities. The extent to which these programs serve diverse veteran populations is not well understood in terms of race, ethnicity, age, gender, ability, or socioeconomic status. Since governmental agencies are increasingly required to foster diversity, equity, and inclusivity, this presents a knowledge gap with policy implications. We paired a thematic analysis of interviews with outdoor professionals with a content...

When established in 1921, the Southern Forest Experiment Station (SOFES) was headquartered in New Orleans, LA—a somewhat ironic choice, given the distance from New Orleans to the major southern forests and most of the Station’s territory (Fickle 2001). According to Forbes (1925), New Orleans had originally been seen as a temporary Station headquarters, but further study into its relative advantages soon conferred its permanence. New Orleans was near some of the southern forests most devastated by lumbering and was a regional rail transportation hub, an important consideration at a period...

Hired as a researcher in 1924, Philip C. Wakeley led the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Southern Forest Experiment Station’s development of reforestation, tree improvement, and genetics across the South during his remarkable 40-year career. Wakeley’s seminal Planting the Southern Pines (Wakeley 1954) was built on some of his earlier works (Wakeley 1929, 1935) and provided foresters with the tools and technology to reforest the South and remains one of the most-cited references of the Forest Service. Wakeley’s studies helped convince foresters and managers of the potential...

1934, near the small town of Otto, NC, the Appalachian Forest Experiment Station, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, established the Coweeta Experimental Forest (later renamed the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory) (Ice and Stednick 2004, Lehman 2009). Much of the early scientific knowledge about how forests influence watershed water cycles was produced from studies at Coweeta. Indeed, much of today’s forest hydrology science—the study of water movement in forests—originated from the research at Coweeta and other experimental forests across the United States (Ice and Stednick 2004).

The Southern Forest Experiment Station (SOFES) had no formally designated experimental forests prior to the passage of the McSweeney-McNary Forest Research Act of 1928. This law legally authorized the establishment of experimental forests and with the August 1930 approval of Forest Service Regulation L-20, a process for the development of experimental forests on national forest lands emerged (Clapp 1931, 1938). While these formalized such facilities, the SOFES had not waited for these to begin such an effort—not by a long shot! To help keep track of the work at Urania, a document was...

Looking back, I recall many fond memories of my association with the Southern Institute of Forest Genetics (SIFG) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. The SIFG was “activated” by the Forest Service’s Southern Forest Experiment Station (SOFES) on August 29, 1954, to meet the following three purposes (Briegleb 1955) focus a staff with specialized training using adequate laboratory and field facilities on some of the fundamental research questions and management problems related to forest genetics, conduct an “aggressive” program of tree improvement, and serve as a repository...

For the first 75 years of its century-long history, the Southern Research Station (SRS) consisted of two separate forest experiment stations. Both the Southern Forest Experiment Station (SOFES) and the Appalachian Forest Experiment Stations (AFES) opened in July 1921; after multiple boundary shifts and a renaming of the AFES to the Southeastern Forest Experiment Station (SEFES) in 1946 (SEFES 1946), they were finally merged in 1995 into the SRS. During these decades, many hundreds of people worked for these research stations. When most people think about staffing in U.S. Department of...

In 1930, Margaret Cordelia Stoughton became the first woman with a forestry degree to be hired by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service as a forester (Kline 2021). During this time, a female forester in America was a novelty and the media reminded readers of that fact at every opportunity in national newspapers and college magazines. After her assignment to the Appalachian Forest Experiment Station (AFES), Margaret’s work—conducting research, publishing papers, and taking photographs—alongside other scientists was instrumental in the research conducted at the AFES. Herein, we...