The mission of USDA's Forest Service Research and Development (FS R&D) is "to develop and deliver knowledge and innovative technology to improve the health and use of forests and rangelands." As a land management agency, the US Forest Service has a unique responsibility to address questions about climate change mitigation and adaptation involving the many issues that challenge forest and rangeland owners, managers, and users. FS R&D focuses its many strengths and capabilities to address questions about climate change impacts; the adaptation actions needed to increase resilience of forests and ranges to the impacts; the potential of forests to mitigate atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentration changes by storing additional carbon in living vegetation and forest products; and reducing fossil carbon use by increasing production of biofuels and substituting forest products for more GHG-intensive materials.

FS global change scientists are dispersed in many locations and work toward resolution of the many different issues and research needs of land owners and managers. There is an extensive infrastructure of research laboratories, long-term research studies, and continuous data from nation-wide forest surveys and experimental forests. More than a decade of focused global change research, a prior decade of air pollution research, and several decades of experience with integrated assessments provide a firm scientific foundation for continuing to address the challenges of global change and forest management. Overall FS R&D global change research priorities involve the three areas of adaptation (maintaining vegetation vitality under changing climate, to continue providing required ecosystem services), mitigation (increasing carbon storage in soils, living plants and wood products, reducing fossil fuel emissions by increasing biofuel use), and policy support (writing national and international assessments, reporting US and UNFCCC greenhouse gases). The FS global change research program is supported by strengths of its more traditional research in areas such as ecophysiology, landscape ecology, watershed hydrology, vegetation modeling, nutrient cycling, forest management and strong and productive partnerships with universities, federal and state agencies, NGOs and the forest industry here and abroad.

For further information, contact Allen M. Solomon, USFS National Program Leader for Global Change Research, at allensolomon@fs.fed.us

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