Forest ThreatNet
Threat Center awarded Bipartisan Infrastructure Law grants to advance forest science
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), also known as the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act (IIJA), has provided the Forest Service with significant new funding since its passage in 2021. In addition to forest management, BIL funds have been awarded for research addressing two areas: restoring ecosystems, and supporting the agency's Wildfire Crisis Strategy. The Threat Center competed successfully across two rounds of proposals, and is leading four new BIL-funded research efforts:
Lead: Frank Koch
This project builds a new partnership between states, universities, industry, and the Forest Service that will allow partners to respond to new threats to southern pines in a timely, consistent manner. The project is designed to address two significant needs: a communication network among participants to report unusual mortality and suspected invasive insects or pathogens, and an early warning system for departures from normal mortality.
Lead: Kevin Potter
Large-scale efforts to restore forestlands will be needed in response to disturbances associated with climate change, including pest infestations, drought, and flooding. Restoration will require tree seedlings that are genetically adapted to the likely future climate conditions in forests where they will be planted. This project will develop information on seed source selection for species that lack such information, and create a decision framework that nursery, orchard, and forest managers can use to learn which seeds and seedlings are needed in different restoration contexts.Lead: Ge Sun
The goal of this project is to improve the Forests to Faucets 2.0 system, including for targeted individual National Forests and adjacent private lands, to identify areas where restoration efforts to improve water quality can be most effective. Results will be communicated with federal and non-federal land managers who recognize the multiple factors that should be considered to protect water quality. New web-based mapping tools and databases will help land managers prioritize lands where restoration expenditures could most effectively benefit the greatest number of people downstream.Lead: Bill Hargrove
Reducing fuels to lower the potential for hazardous fire--whether through prescribed burning or mechanical thinning--works by disconnecting the fuels in the landscape, reducing the likelihood of wildfire sweeping across the map. But fuel treatments need to be placed in just the right spots to be effective. To reduce fuel connectivity efficiently, treatments should be placed in locations that are bottlenecks and crossroads for moving fire. This project uses supercomputing methods on large spatial datasets to provide an optimal fuel treatment map design to be used in wildfire risk management.
Learn about other BIL-funded projects at the Southern Research Station.
« Previous page Next page » Return to contents
