Northern Forest Science and Applications
Adapting Forests for Changed Conditions
The Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States include 174 million acres of public and private forests that are important to jobs and the economy and vital to recreation and the regions' character. The Northern Forest Science and Application unit is collaborating with universities, foundations, industry, and state land management organizations to increase research on and demonstration of global change resistance, resilience, and transitional silvicultural strategies for northern forests.
What is Forest Adaptation?
Forest adaption is the strategic and deliberate use of management tactics to influence the composition and structure of forests. While change has been constant across the forests of the Northeast and Midwest, the pace of change today is unprecedented. Land managers can use adaptation techniques to help forests catch up to rapidly changing conditions, and our work provides the science on which those techniques are based.
What This Research Means
Our research informs the mosaic of Tribal, state, private and Federal land managers who are responsible for protecting the ecological integrity and long-term health/productivity of forests and associated wetland and aquatic ecosystems.
Selected Research Summaries
- Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change
- The DREAM Project - Desired Regeneration through Assisted Migration
- Forest Management Improves Health of Eastern White Pine
- Land Management to Mitigate Emerald Ash Borer Impacts
- Leaving an Uncut Tree Facilitates Tree Seedling Diversity in Forest Openings
- Management Guide Targets Red Oak and White Pine Regeneration in New England
- Mixedwood Management
- Restoring Barrens and Northern Dry Forests in Northeastern Wisconsin
- Fire severity and ecosystem impacts immediately following an extreme fire event in northern Minnesota
- Using Tree Rings to Understand Climate Change and Pollution
- Variability in Hemlock Decline Rates Following Infestation: Field Studies to GIS Susceptibility Modeling
- Using Hyperspectral Techniques to Map Hemlock Decline
- Critical Loads for Nitrogen and Sulfur Deposition to Forest Ecosystems
- North Central Region Forest Management Guides