Sustaining Forests in a Changing Environment

Our Mission 

Our mission is to provide basic ecological understanding, management guidelines, and policy-relevant information to sustain forest ecosystems in an environment changing rapidly through the direct and interacting effects of changes in climate, air quality, deer impacts, fire regimes, invasive species, land use, and human values.

Our Research Areas

Our focus is on sustaining biological diversity, economic and ecological productivity, forest health and vitality, and contributions to carbon cycles. Much of our research is conducted in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and adjacent states in mixed oak, Allegheny hardwood, and northern hardwood forests, but our work has national and global implications. 

Our research approach is to understand and manage: We develop basic ecological understanding through observational and manipulative studies, then develop guidelines that help policy makers and managers sustain these forests.  We focus our research on sustaining forests in a changing environment on five broad problem areas:

• Sustaining Mixed Oak, Allegheny, and Northern Hardwood Forests 
• Fire Behavior and Effects Research under the National Fire Plan 
• Managing Forests Affected by Invasive Species
• Understanding, Predicting, and Managing the Impact of Climate Change on Forests
• Contributing to Stewardship through Long-term Research including Research Conducted on the Kane and Vinton Furnace Experimental Forests

Recent Publications

• Dickinson, Matthew B.; Hutchinson, Todd F.; Dietenberger, Mark; Matt, Frederick; Peters, Matthew P.; Yang, Jian  2016.   Litter Species Composition and Topographic Effects on Fuels and Modeled Fire Behavior in an Oak-Hickory Forest in the Eastern USA.  PLOS ONE, Vol. 11(8): e0159997-. 
• Miller, Gary W.; Brose, Patrick H.; Gottschalk, Kurt W.  2016.   Advanced oak seedling development as influenced by shelterwood treatments, competition control, deer fencing, and prescribed fire.  Journal of Forestry. 11 p. http://dx.doi.org/10.5849/jof.16-002 
• Marschall, Joseph; Stambaugh, Michael; Jones, Benjamin; Guyette, Richard; Brose, Patrick; Dey, Daniel C.  2016.   Fire regimes of remnant pitch pine communities in the Ridge and Valley Region of central Pennsylvania, USA. Forests.  Forests. 7(10): 224. 
• Stoleson, Scott; Ordiway, Linda; Thomas, Emily H.; Watts, Donald.  2016.   A mobile target-netting technique for canopy birds.  North American Bird Bander. 41(2): 57-61. 
• Clark, James S.; Iverson, Louis; Woodall, Christopher W.; Allen, Craig D.; Bell, David M.; Bragg, Don C.; D'Amato, Anthony W.; Davis, Frank W.; Hersh, Michelle H.; Ibanez, Ines; Jackson, Stephen T.; Matthews, Stephen; Pederson, Neil; Peters, Matthew; Schwartz, Mark W.; Waring, Kristen M.; Zimmermann, Niklaus E.  2016.   The impacts of increasing drought on forest dynamics, structure, and biodiversity in the United States.  Global Change Biology. 22: 2329-2352. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13160

For further details log on website :
http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/units/sustainingforests/