Welcome to the Forest Watershed Science
Research Work Unit (RWU-4353)

• Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, NC
  James Vose, Project Leader
• Center for Forested Wetlands & Savannah River, SC
  
Carl Trettin, Team Leader
• Coldwater Fisheries, VA
  Andy Dolloff, Team Leader

The importance of forested watersheds for providing clean and regulated water to support aquatic ecosystems and provide water for human consumption and recreation has long been recognized.  Historically, the southern United States has been perceived as an area with abundant supplies of water.  However, several co-occurring driving forces suggest that natural resource managers, policy makers, and communities will be faced with significant challenges with regards to water resource issues in the 21st century.  Forces such as increased population growth and urbanization, climate change and variability, and invasive species have the potential to increase water demand, while simultaneously decreasing water supply and quantity.  Dealing with these forces will require interdisciplinary approaches
The Forest Watershed Science is one of sixteen RWU’s maintained under the Southern Research Station by the USDA Forest Service. Research teams are located across the southeast, and were combined in 2004 to better facilitate research coordination efforts. The work units include in the southern Appalachian Mountains, the Piedmont, and the eastern Seaboard.

Mission

Provide information, methods, and guidelines to implement and evaluate ecosystem management concepts, practices, and effects on water, soil and forest resources.

To improved knowledge, baseline data, and predictive methods that are required to evaluate effects of the atmospheric environment on forested watersheds in the southeastern U.S.

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Emphasis areas for the forest watershed science unit are:

• Improve understanding of linkages among terrestrial, riparian, and aquatic ecosystems at multiple scales (e.g., link the “mountains to the sea”)
• Capitalize on long-term data to develop better analytical and predictive models
• Develop and apply approaches to scale from the small watersheds to landscapes
• Develop and provide state-of-the-science watershed management and restoration knowledge, tools, and techniques to natural resource managers, policy makers, and planners.

Much of the world’s knowledge on the relationships among forest (managed and unmanaged), soils, water supply and quality have been derived from USFS long term watershed research at places like the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, Fernow Experimental Forest, Hubbard Brook, H.J. Andrews, and the Santee Experimental Forests. 

Long term watersheds will continue to serve valuable roles as benchmarks of forest watershed structure and function, for monitoring and analyses, for testing management options and novel experiments, and for demonstration and education. 

By building on long term watershed research, monitoring and analyses of forest watershed responses to climate, insects and disease, and management options to deal with stressors and disturbance will become even more relevant in the future.  Our research will build on the growing network of watershed studies in the southern U.S. that span the mountain to the sea.

Our research partners and collaborators include universities and colleges, state forestry and wildlife agencies, national forests, and many others.

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