Kier Klepzig, Assistant Director | Southern Research Station | 200 W.T. Weaver Blvd | Asheville, NC 28804

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Forest Threats Resources and Tools

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Forest Threat Summary Viewer
The Forest Threat Summary Viewer provides images, distribution maps, web links, extension and state contact information, and brief and detailed descriptions about specific forest threats in the eastern United States.

Landcover Maps
View details about landcover across the continental U.S or even just in your neighborhood with interactive Google Earth maps.

Forest ThreatNet Newsletter
Forest ThreatNet is EFETAC's quarterly newsletter that provides the latest information concerning ongoing research, projects, and partnerships.

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Compass Articles

Turning Up The heat... On a Bubbling Cauldron of Forest Threats
Wildfires, insect invasions, diseases, and nonnative invasive plants are not new to the southern landscape. Some of these forest “threats” actually play a crucial role in the well-being of ecological communities; for example, the original Coastal Plain forest once consisted of longleaf pines, wiregrass, and redcockaded woodpeckers—all dependent on periodic wildfires.(More)

Going Up Turkey Creek: Modeling Water Availability in the Coastal Plain
On a mild, sunny June morning, Devendra Amatya stands near a State highway bridge on the bank of Turkey Creek, a gentle blackwater stream in South Carolina’s Coastal Plain. The creek winds through the Santee Experimental Forest, which is located within the Francis Marion National Forest at the headwaters of the east branch of the Cooper River...(More)

The Fate of Southern Forests: Impacts of Climate change and Variability
Today, forests comprise 214 million acres, or more than 65 percent, of the South’s land area. Southern forests provide a wealth of services and products—clean air and water, terrestrial and aquatic habitat, cultural and aesthetic values, recreational opportunities, carbon storage, timber, pulpwood, fuel, food, and medicinal plants...(More)

Forests and Global Climate Change
Forest Service scientists have been studying global change and its effects on forests and ranges informally for many decades, and formally since passage of the U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990. More recently, the Forest Service as a whole has come to recognize the threats and opportunities involved with maintaining ecosystem services and products under rapidly changing climate and climate variability...(More)

That Carbon Dance
Carbon—the basic building block of life itself—moves in a cycle through earth, sea, and sky. Along the way, it’s taken up and stored— sequestered—for varying periods of time in soils, plants, and oceans...(More)

We’re All Downstream
Global warming and climate change are in the news every day now. It may seem natural to tie this summer’s drought to Earth’s warming, but it’s been hot and dry before: Just think of the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s...(More)

A Director Undaunted by Threats
Eastern forests are vulnerable to stresses from insects and disease, wildland loss, invasive species, uncharacteristic fire, and climate change. As new threats emerge and old threats resurface, the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center (EFETAC) is uniquely poised as an interdisciplinary resource to actively develop the new technology and tools needed to anticipate and respond to eastern forest threats as they arise.(More)

Too Warm For Trout?
Can you imagine a future without trout swimming in mountain streams? A hundred years from now, the recreational fishing that many people enjoy in the Southern Appalachians could be a relic of the past.(More)

Gypsy Moths: Balloonists and Hitchhikers
Gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar L.) is a nonnative insect introduced in 1869 into the Boston area, where some of the larvae escaped and spread into New England. The moth has since spread west and south to Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, into the Mid-Atlantic States and south into Virginia and North Carolina.(More)

Energy Efficiency
Most experts agree that forest treatments designed to improve tree health in advance of gypsy moth should be done 1 to 3 (ideally 4 to 10) years before the arrival of the pest. Stands not completely recovered from cutting operations may rebound more slowly from gypsy moth infestations...(More)

Gypsy Moth Host Preferences
Favored: Species preferred or readily eaten by gypsy moth during all larval stages-most oak species, apple, basswood, river and white birch, hawthorn, hazelnut, hornbeam, serviceberry, sweetgum, willows, and witch-hazel(More)

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