2014 Research Highlights
Which Tree Species are Most at Risk?
A variety of threats, most importantly climate change and insect and disease infestation, will increase the likelihood that a given forest tree species will experience population-level or species-level extinction during the next century. The risk of such outcomes will vary because species differ widely in their physiological tolerances, life-history strategies, dispersal abilities, and susceptibility to pests and pathogens. Prioritizing species and populations for management and conservation activities, therefore, is a critical challenge for the USDA Forest Service, other federal and state agencies, and nonprofit organizations. To address this challenge, a cooperating scientist with the Eastern Threat Center is leading the three-year Project CAPTURE (Conservation Assessment and Prioritization of Forest Trees Under Risk of Extirpation), with collaborators throughout the Forest Service, to determine which forest tree species and populations to target for monitoring, management, and conservation across multiple scales.
Project CAPTURE is training resource managers and scientists to evaluate the genetic resources of forest tree species regionally and nationally through the application of an established prioritization framework. Following this training, these resource managers and scientists participated in a collaborative process to build expert consensus. This consensus focuses on specific conservation and management objectives of the prioritization process, risk and conservation factors to include in the assessment, and how the framework should be applied to meet the defined objectives.
Forest Service Partners/Collaborators: Southern, Pacific Northwest, Pacific Southwest, Northern, Rocky Mountain, Southwestern, Intermountain, Eastern, and Alaska Regions; Forest Health Monitoring Program; Forest Health Protection; Pacific Northwest Research Station; Pacific Southwest Research Station; Northern Research Station; Rocky Mountain Research Station
External Partners/Collaborators: North Carolina State University
Contact: Kevin Potter, (919) 549-4071, kevin.potter@usda.gov
Right: Hemlock trees are threatened by an invasive insect, the hemlock woolly adelgid. Photo by Steve Norman, USDA Forest Service.
