Sustainability includes the ecological, economic, and social aspects of managing forests.
These two-certification processes have management techniques with different components but ultimately have the same objective of sustainable forestry. Third-party firms will act as certifiers and will audit the forests for conformity to the certification systems standards. The project will allow us to assess expanding forest certification benefits to the non-industrial private landowners, who own 76 percent of North Carolina s forests. We can improve educational programs about certification for our students and for professional forest land managers. The audits are expected to begin this spring and should be completed in a year.