Forest ThreatNet
Eastern Threat Center Highlights Cont'd
Southern University Students Learn About Eastern Threat Center Carbon and Water Research
Students from Southern University in Baton Rouge, LA, toured carbon and water research sites near Plymouth, NC. Eastern Threat Center biological scientists Michael Gavazzi and Emrys Treasure (pictured center and third from left, respectively) led the tour. Students learned more about different pine management operations used at the sites, and the Eastern Threat Center’s role in studying the impact of forest management and climate on carbon and water budgets and allocations. The trip was funded by a research grant to bring climate change awareness to Southern University students and better prepare them to enter environmental science-related fields.
Climate Change Tool Aids Forest Planning and Management Across the Nation
The Template for Assessing Climate Change Impacts and Management Options (TACCIMO) continues to expand and provide land managers, planners, and other decision makers with the best climate change science available. TACCIMO’s scientific literature database now contains information from more than 1,000 peer-reviewed sources describing climate change effects on natural resources and land management options that can help forests adapt to changing conditions. TACCIMO currently supports Land and Resource Management Plan revision processes for El Yunque, Francis Marion, Nantahala-Pisgah, and Southern Sierra National Forests, as well as the California Landscape Conservation Cooperative’s Vulnerability Assessment for the Sierra Nevada region.
The TACCIMO development team recently partnered with the North Carolina Forest Service to publish a brochure highlighting potential forest threats and forestry practices that promote resilient forests.
ForWarn Helps Natural Resource Managers Track Coast-to-Coast Forest Change
The Eastern and Western Threat Centers unveiled ForWarn in 2012 to help natural resource managers monitor forest change due to seasonal rhythms, growth and mortality, year-to-year climate variation, and the effects of disturbance from insects, diseases, wildfires, extreme weather, or other natural or human-caused events. ForWarn’s Forest Change Assessment Viewer provides weekly forest change maps as well as tools to help managers identify disturbance causes, such as the Pest Proximity database which lists most likely insect “suspects” for a disturbance at any point on the map based on previous insect disturbance events. Researchers are also using ForWarn for several applications, including monitoring national evergreen health, southern Appalachian hemlock mortality, and long term fire effects and recovery.
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