# Presentation: 920321

## (Black Slide/Placeholder)

## SGSF Orientation to the Southern Research Station

## Our mission...
to create the science and technology needed to sustain and enhance southern forest ecosystems and the benefits they provide. 

**to create the science and technology needed to sustain and enhance southern forest ecosystems and the benefits they provide.**** **

## 423 total employees
136 researchers in 27 units
20 field locations in 11 of 13 States 
	(labs, universities, experimental forests)
$46 million appropriated, $4 million soft 
$15 million (30%) in grants to universities & State agencies
5000 online publications, 3 million downloads
38,000 hard copy publications delivered
507 presentations (180-societies, 327-public)

**136 researchers in 27 units**
**20 field locations in 11 of 13 States **
**	****(labs, universities, experimental forests)**
**$46 million appropriated, $4 million soft **
**$15 million (30%) in grants to universities & State agencies**
**5000 online publications, 3 million downloads**
**38,000 hard copy publications delivered**
**507 presentations (180-societies, 327-public)**

## Research Work Units

## Experimental forests

## Key Historical Events

**1876****	****$2,000 appropriation to USDA for forest investigations**
**1905****	****Forest Service established; reserves transferred to USDA**
**1908****	****First experiment station in Arizona**
**1920s****	****Stations founded in New Orleans (Southern) and Asheville (Appalachian); Bent Creek, Coweeta, Harrison, Palustris **
**1930s****	****Forest surveys begin; early research on reforestation, fire, hardwood management, insects & diseases, products, economics, tree improvement, erosion, watersheds**
**1940s to 1960s****	****Research leadership shifts from Branch Chiefs to Center Directors to Assistant Directors; boom in laboratory building**
**1990s****	****IITF established as separate Station**
**1992****	****Pete Roussopoulos named Station Director**
**1995****	****Consolidation of Southern & Southeastern Stations**
**2001 to 2003****	****Southern Forest Resource Assessment**

## Program emphasis areas

- • 	Southern pines, including fire and invasives
- •  	Inventory & monitoring
- •  	Human-forest interactions, including urban forestry, wildland urban interface, forest economics
- •  	Forest products & enterprises
- •  	Mountains & highlands
- •  	Wetlands, bottomlands, riparian
- •  	Large-scale assessment & modeling
- •  	Adoption of results

## Southern pine ecosystems

**Research units involved**
- Auburn AL:	Vegetation Management & Longleaf
- Pineville, LA:	Even-aged Pine Forests
- Monticello, AR:	Upland Forest Ecosystems
- Saucier, MS:	Forest Genetics
- Research Triangle, NC:	Biological Foundations of Sustainability
- Nacogdoches, TX:	Wildlife Habitats
- Clemson, SC:	Restoration of Longleaf Pine Understories

## Southern pine ecosystems

**Highlights**
- • 	Long history of pine ecosystem restoration, prescribed burning, and regeneration alternatives
- • 	New model for selecting among breeding strategies
- • 	Longleaf-wiregrass ecosystem restoration
- • 	Nursery work
- • 	Continuing demonstration work at Crossett
- • 	Shortleaf-bluestem restoration in the Ouachita mountains

## Wildfire & prescribed burning

**Research units involved**
- Athens, GA:  	Disturbance of Southern 					Pine Forests
- Auburn, AL:  	Vegetation Management
- Pineville, LA:	Intensive Pine Management

## Wildfire & prescribed burning

**Highlights**
- • 	National fire & fire surrogate study
- • 	Smoke movement modeling
- • 	Ecosystem specific fuel studies
- • 	Longleaf, table mountain, and shortleaf studies in mountain ecosystems

## Invasive plants and pests

**Research units involved**
- Athens, GA:  	Insects and Diseases
- Pineville, LA:	Bark Beetle & Invasive Insects
- Starkville, MS:  	Wood Products Insects
- Auburn AL:  	Invasive plants
- Stoneville, MS:  	Bottomland Hardwood Management

## Invasive plants and pests

**Highlights**
- • 	Southern pine beetle-fungus-parasitic wasp interactions
- • 	New forest threat center in Asheville
- • 	Invasive plant book “flying off the shelf”
- • 	Termiticide testing
- • 	Hemlock woolly adelgid research at Coweeta/Athens
- • 	Sudden oak death
- • 	Wood wasp work at Stoneville
- • 	Continuing work on fusiform rust, gypsy moth, pitch canker

## Inventory and monitoring

**What are we doing differently now?**
- • 	Annual versus periodic
- • 	Forest health indicators
- • 	Partnership with the States

## Inventory and monitoring

**Highlights**
- • 	First in nation: South Carolina report
- • 	Others southern States following
- • 	Ramping up to full implementation
- • 	FIA program manager—Bill Burkman
- • 	Established Knoxville as headquarters
- • 	Fragmentation & land use change forecasts
- • 	Look for national forest health reports this year
- • 	New technology for monitoring invasive risks (example SOD)

## Urban forestry & 			wildland urban interface

**Research units involved**
- Athens, GA:  	Recreation, Urban Forests, and Demographic Trends
- Gainesville, FL:	Southern Wildland-Urban Interface

## Urban forestry & 			wildland urban interface

**Highlights**
- • 	WUI science & applications unit in FL; partnership with S&PF and State Foresters
- • 	Urban forestry center—partnership with S&PF in Atlanta
- • 	Technology for accurate visitation data on NFs
- • 	National survey on recreation and the environment
- • 	Assessment of demographic trends affecting forests

## Forest products & enterprises

**Research units involved**
- Blacksburg, VA:  	Hardwood products/Recycling
- Pineville, LA:		Southern Forest Resource 					Utilization
- Auburn, AL:  		Forest Operations
- Research Triangle, NC	Forest Economics
- New Orleans, LA:	Laws, Taxes, Economic 					Influences
- Huntsville, AL:		National Agroforestry Center

## Forest products

**Highlights**
- • 	Composites from southern forest resources
- • 	Bioproducts and bioenergy from southern pines
- •  	Assessment of tree characteristics and health (forest trees and logs)
- • 	Non-timber forest products
- • 	Recycling and pallet work

## Forest economics

**Highlights**
- • 	SOFAC timber supply models
- • 	Tax workshops for consultants & accountants (http://www.timbertax.org/)
- • 	Effects of regulations
- • 	Assessments of landowners and ownership
- • 	Fire economics—prevention, suppression, salvage
- • 	Scientific assessment of wildland-urban applications

## Forest enterprises

**Highlights**
- • 	Expansion of agroforestry research and applications to the South
- • 	Meeting the needs of forestry _and_ agriculture in the real world
- • 	Silvapasture work
- • 	Wildland-urban applications of agroforestry

## Mountains & highlands

**Research units involved**
- Asheville, NC: 	Southern Appalachian & Cumberland Forests (Huntsville)
- Franklin, NC:	Coweeta Hydrologic Lab
- Clemson, SC:	Threatened & Endangered Species
- Monticello, AR:	Mixed Hardwood-Pine Ecosystems of the Interior Highlands

## Mountains & highlands

**Highlights**
- Bent Creek: long history of forest management solutions, silviculture training, new HFRA assessment on gypsy moth/biomass in Kentucky, research/recreation conflicts
- Coweeta: long history of water responses, road building guidelines, LTER site, new conference center/bunkhouse
- Clemson/Nacogdoches: bats, butterflies, birds
- Monticello: definitive book on oaks in the Highlands, new HFRA assessment on red oak borer

## Wetlands, bottomlands, riparian

**Research units involved**
- Charleston, SC:  	Center for Forested Wetlands
- Stoneville, MS:	Center for Bottomland Hardwoods
- Oxford/Starkville, MS:	Mid-South Watersheds
- Blacksburg, VA:	Trout Ecology

## Wetlands, bottomlands, riparian

**Highlights**
- • 	Charleston: long history of loblolly silviculture, sustainable management of Coastal Plain forests, burn plot studies
- • 	Develop wetlands restoration technologies
- • 	Wetlands creation downstream of gated communities
- • 	Case study quantifying carbon sequestration (bottomlands)
- • 	Basinwide trout habitat surveys and SMZ studies
- • 	New building at VPI for aquatic environment work
- • 	Mussels, crayfish, eels
- • 	Pondberry restoration
- • 	Sweetgrass research and outreach

## Large-scale assessment & modeling

**Research units involved**
- Raleigh, NC:  		Global Change
- Research Triangle, NC:	Biological Foundations of 		Sustainability
- 		Forest Economics

## Large-scale assessment & modeling

**Highlights**
- • 	Southern forest resource assessment
- • 	Decision support
- • 	Carbon sequestration
- • 	New hydrologic models
- • 	Future water supply issues

## Orders for hard-copy pubs	(average 35,000 per year) 

## Orders for PDFs on Internet	(average 3 million per year) 

## Forest Service R&D Goal

**Research is**** ****adopted**** ****to improve**** ****sustainable ****management and use **
**of natural resources**

## Adoption of results

- • 	Four demonstration forests: Brender, Coweeta, Bent Creek, Crossett
- • 	Seven applications specialists in field: Gainesville, Bent Creek, Coweeta, Athens (2), Lincoln (2)
- • 	Retooling at HQ: more graphics and science applications (advertising specialist position)
- • 	New science magazine
- • 	Hypertext encyclopedia effort
- • 	National effort to standardize & measure performance
- Alabama A&M minority landowner training—testing technology

## We Learned...

- Partnering scientists with graphic designers
- Scientists & customers “on the ground” to negotiate new research
- Focus on intended user, not convenience of science organization
- Attention to application of results during research planning
- Mechanism needed for selecting products to package
- Lots of science delivery happening at SRS, some $6 million (11% of budget): 80% field, 20% HQ

## Keys to adoption...

- Users and partners are engaged in identifying needs, setting priorities, and planning program delivery.
- Information seekers get understandable, rapid, answers synthesized from current and past findings.
- R&D products meet users needs, are easy to locate and apply, and are supported.
- Consumer confidence increases as users associate R&D with its products and expertise.

## Moving towards...

- • 	Bigger Web presence
- • 	More connection with nonscientific publics
- • 	More graphics
- • 	More contact with media
- • 	Better products for congressional staffs
- • 	Smaller, more focused delivery
- • 	More interpretation

## Getting partners involved, meaningfully

- How to engage users and partners in identifying needs, setting priorities, and planning program delivery?
- How to galvanize the Southern natural resource community in providing understandable, rapid answers synthesized from current and past findings?
- How to ensure that R&D products meet users needs, are easy to locate and apply, and are supported?

## Traditional involvement opportunities

- •  	Peer reviews of research grant proposals, study plans, manuscripts
- •  	Annual appropriation cycle measures value to Administration and Congress
- •  	3 to 5 years: scientist PDs and accomplishments evaluated by peers to raise, lower, or maintain pay grade
- •  	5 years: rechartering research units via TAVs (technical assistance visits)
- •  	Periodic strategic planning at Stations
- •  	Periodic customer surveys (two to date, both conducted by national office in last decade)

## Toward More Personal Contact

- • 	Southern Forest Leadership Tour to rebuild community
- • 	Fred Allen serving as liaison to SGSF
- • 	Cooperation with Wildland Urban Interface
- • 	SGSF standing committee membership
- • 	Research work unit direct contacts with State agency personnel

## Our challenge...

**How can we help you get your job done better?**