Northeastern Research Station

Living Memorials

Research and Development

Special Programs

Northern Global Change Research Program:

The Forest Service goal for global change research is to establish a sound scientific basis for making regional, national, and international resource management and policy decisions in the context of global change issues.

Forest Inventory and Analysis Project (FIA):

Forest Inventory and Analysis reports on status and trends in forest area and location; in the species, size, and health of trees; in total tree growth, mortality, and removals by harvest; in wood production and utilization rates by various products; and in forest land ownership. The enhanced FIA program will include information relating to tree crown condition, lichen community composition, soils, ozone indicator plants, complete vegetative diversity, and coarse woody debris. The program is managed by the Research & Development organization within the USDA Forest Service in cooperation with State and Private Forestry and National Forest Systems. FIA has been in operation under various names (Forest Survey and Forest Inventory and Analysis) for some 70 years. The program covers forests on all forest lands within the U.S. The program is implemented in cooperation with a variety of partners including State Forestry Agencies and private landowners who grant access to their lands for data collection purposes.

FIA Spatial Data Services:

A point of contact for FIA data, called FIA Spatial Data Services, was created to facilitate access to FIA data without compromising the security of the plot locations or land owner privacy. The function of FIA Spatial Data Services is to connect geospatial data submitted by interested parties to the geospatial information collected by FIA. We return data to the customer that both meets their needs and follows the confidentiality laws set out by Congress. FIA data is a valuable resource that we believe should remain accessible within the law.