Forest ThreatNet

• The Eastern Threat Center advanced research, science delivery, and partnerships through a variety of activities in 2017. Read highlights of the team's accomplishments.
• Center tools like TACCIMO and LanDAT are helping resource managers understand changing landscapes and plan for the future. These and other efforts are highlighted in a recent article from the Carolina Public Press.
• The Forest Service Office of Sustainability and Climate's Drought Gallery features fact sheets, information on regional workshops, and maps of climate indicators changing over time, including a time series of moisture deficit and surplus maps co-developed by Center research ecologist Frank Koch. As droughts are often multi-year events, the maps show moisture conditions for each year between 2000 and 2016 based on three consecutive years of data. The gallery also includes moisture maps based on one and five years of data, respectively.

• A special issue of the journal Forests, co-edited by Center research hydrologist Ge Sun, has been reprinted as a book. Forest Management and Water Resources in the Anthropocene covers topics ranging from soil moisture, wildfire, streamflow, land use, and modeling studies.

• The Center-hosted USDA Southeast Regional Climate Hub has published its winter newsletter.
• The Climate Change Resource Center (CCRC), a Center partner, has a new topic page on the Effects of Drought on Forests and Rangelands, which provides an overview on characterizing and predicting drought, understanding its effects, and how to manage for and adapt to changing drought regimes. The CCRC is also featuring the U.S. Drought Monitor, a tool which provides current weekly drought conditions maps and summaries for the nation.

• The U.S. Forest Service Research and Development newsletter highlights science news across the agency. Read the December issue, and subscribe to receive future issues.

New Publications (search Treesearch for all Forest Service pubs and abstracts):

• McNulty, S., E. Treasure, L. Jennings, D. Meriwether, D. Harris, and P. Arndt. 2017.
  Translating national level forest service goals to local level land management: carbon sequestration. Climatic Change. DOI: 10.1007/s10584-017-2046-5
• Riitters, K., K. Potter, B.V. Iannone III, C. Oswalt, S. Fei, and Q. Guo. 2017. Landscape correlates of forest plant invasions: A high-resolution analysis across the eastern United States. Diversity and Distributions. DOI: 10.1111/ddi.12680
• Yemshanov, D.; Koch, F.H.; Coulston, J.W.; Smith, W.D. 2017. Mapping risks and impacts of invasive alien species with dynamic simulation models. Chapter 6 in Robinson, A.P.; Walshe, T.; Burgman, M.A.; Nunn, M., eds. 2017. Invasive Species: Risk Assessment and Management. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 130-151.

Personnel Updates

Yu Zhengxiang is a visiting scientist from Northeast Forestry University in Harbin, China, where he is a Ph.D. candidate (Ecology). He will be working with Eastern Threat Center scientists for one year to study the impacts of wildland fires on forest hydrology. He holds M.S (Ecology) and B.S. (Geographic Information Systems) degrees from Northeast Forestry University.