Forest ThreatNet

For 22 consecutive years, researchers from the USDA Forest Service and its partners at North Carolina State University tracked forest health status and trends across the United States. The latest installment of these annual reports was released in 2023, reporting on trends through 2022. The report, which is the only national summary of forest health undertaken on an annual basis, is sponsored by the Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) program of the Forest Service and published by the Southern Research Station.

Some highlighted chapters from the latest report:

• Broad-scale patterns of forest fire occurrence across the United States and the Caribbean territories
• The National Lichen Atlas: summarizing 23 years of epiphytic lichen community data
• Ash tree decline and mortality in Ohio and the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania
• Laurel wilt spread, vector flight behavior, and impacts in sassafras beyond the Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain
• And seven additional chapters covering forest health issues of national concern

Forests constantly change because of tree mortality and growth, weather events and climate trends, and disturbances from stressors including fire, insects, and diseases. Annual assessments of forest health are key to understanding whether year-to-year changes are part of longer-term trends. These assessments require consistent, broad-scale, and long-term monitoring of forest health indicators — and the participation of multiple federal, state, academic, and private partners. Every year, scientists from across the USDA Forest Service as well as university researchers, state partners, and many other experts identify ecological resources whose condition is deteriorating across large regions, potentially in subtle ways. The goal of the report is to identify ecological resources whose condition is deteriorating. The report includes short- and long-term forest health assessments from the continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, and the U.S. Caribbean territories. Specific chapters address status and trends in forest wildfire, drought, insect and disease effects, tree mortality, and satellite-detected canopy disturbance at national scales.