Southern Research Station Headquarters - Asheville, NC
![[Images] Five photos of different landscape](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090115230901im_/http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/images/imstr1.jpg "[Images] Five photos of different landscape")
Kier Klepzig,
Assistant Director
| Southern Research Station
| 200 W.T. Weaver Blvd
| Asheville, NC 28804 |
|
Forest Threats Accomplishments
Eastern forests are subject to a variety of environmental stresses such as insects, diseases, invasive plants, drought, fire, cataclysmic storms, and development. Sometimes these impacts occur individually but often they come in combination, producing lasting effects on ecological and socioeconomic values. Scientists involved in Threats to Forest Health look beyond piecemeal attempts to address these environmental stresses and focus instead on interacting, multiple stresses, so that land managers can anticipate disturbances and act to prevent or lessen the effects, or restore affected ecosystems.
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Advanced Technology Used to Monitor Forest Change |
IUFRO Interdivisional Conference on Forest Landscape Restoration |
A New Phase Change in Landscape Dynamics |
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Impacts of Fire and |
New products in 2007 to combat forest threats ...more... |
Advanced Technology Used to Monitor Forest Change
Many forest changes are lost in the background at a distance, but an isolated change may be part of a broader pattern when viewed from afar. Finding a proper balance between detail and perspective challenges those who monitor forest conditions over broad areas. Station scientists at the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center have teamed up with NASA’s Stennis Space Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and other FS technology centers to develop an early warning system that uses multiple sensors operating at multiple scales. Advanced computer algorithms on supercomputers create a composite map every eight days. Every 500 square-meter pixel in the map is categorized using explicit information about topography and climate in addition to MODIS values. By comparing a pixel with its previous states, one can detect unexpected transitions. Multiple shifts or a recognizable pattern could trigger additional examination by specialized airborne sensors or ground crews. NASA is currently testing hyperspectral sensors for this purpose. William H. Hargrove (whargrove@fs.fed.us)
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IUFRO Interdivisional Conference on Forest Landscape Restoration
An interdivisional conference on Forest Landscape Restoration was held in Seoul, Korea from 14 to 19 May 2007. A total of 111 scientific papers were presented orally (71) or as posters (40) in three days, followed by one- or three-day post-conference field trips. About 300 participants attended the Conference, representing 27 countries from Asia, Australia and Oceania, the Americas, and Europe. The objective of the Conference was to examine the scientific basis for forest landscape Restoration and its linkages to practice and policy. Presentations focused on contributions from ecological and social sciences, including models to integrate the approaches and case studies to illustrate Restoration practices. A special workshop on tools provided participants an opportunity to discuss how to actually accomplish landscape Restoration on the ground. A proceedings was published by the Korea Forest Research Institute and distributed at the meeting; pdfs of the papers can be downloaded from the conference Web site (http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/korea/). A book from the conference, tentatively titled “Forest Landscape Restoration: Integrating Ecological and Social Sciences” is in preparation. Selected papers will be published as special issues of one or more journals. John Stanturf (jstanturf@fs.fed.us)
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A New Phase Change in Landscape Dynamics
Most human impacts on forests and grasslands are mediated by land-use changes that occur as a result of population increases and new home construction in undeveloped areas or semi-natural landscapes. In order to understand these changes and predict future impacts on amenities like biodiversity and water quality, landscape ecologists need reliable reference standards to compare with observed patterns. Such standards need to take into account certain types of phase changes (abrupt shifts in the state of an ecosystem) that can occur as land-use intensifies in a given area. In the past, percolation theory has provided a rigorous basis for interpreting changes in popular measures of habitat quality such as average forest patch size and forest connectivity across a landscape. Southern Research Station scientists at the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center (EFETAC) and the European Commission have identified a new type of phase change that occurs as habitat edges switch abruptly from interior to exterior edges. This contextual phase change occurs at levels of land-use change that are much lower than that reflected in percolation indices, which improves the sensitivity with which land-use changes in forested and grassland landscapes are measured. Kurt Riitters (kriitters@fs.fed.us)
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Impacts of Fire and Invasive Species on Pollinators in Forests
Jim Hanula (SRS-4552, Athens) determined which method of removing privet from riparian forests would move forests most quickly to the desired future condition. One privet removal treatment resulted in a 4-fold increase in pollinator diversity and a 10-fold increase in pollinator abundance after only one year. This innovative project has served to develop management strategies that favor pollinator abundance and raise awareness about the damaging effects of invasive plants on pollinators. In addition, Dr. Hanula studied the impacts of fire and fire surrogates on pollinators in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina and coastal plain of Alabama. In partnership with the University of Georgia, Dr. Hanula initiated this research from a need to insure that forest management practices did not negatively affect pollinators. Dr. Hanula found that a combination of cutting the shrub layer followed by prescribed fire in the mountains greatly increased the diversity and abundance of pollinators including a rare butterfly, the diana fritillary. Similar treatments on the coastal plain showed that these management practices did not have a negative effect on pollinators there. For his efforts, Dr. Hanula received national recognition in the form the USDA Forest Service 2007 Celebrating Wildflowers Award for Excellence in Pollinator Conservation. Jim Hanula (Jhanula@fs.fed.us)
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