SRS held a virtual storytelling event to celebrate some of the people, places, and relationships that contributed to our hundred-year legacy of research.

The classic publication Direct Seeding Southern Pines: History and Status of a Technique Developed for Restoring Cutover Forests was redesigned to showcase the Southern Forest Experiment Station’s early 20th century work to put millions of acres of forest land back into production (GTR-SRS-187).

The first silvicultural study of the Southern Forest Experiment Station began in 1915 in central Louisiana and measured the growth responses of loblolly pine trees to different thinning practices.

A new journal article describes the watersheds, long-term datasets, and history of Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, including forty years of membership in the National Science Foundation-funded Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program (1980-2020).

The Puerto Rico Breeding Bird Atlas summarizes the timing of breeding and geographic distribution of 130 breeding bird species on Puerto Rico and its associated satellite islands and cays (GTR-IITF-53).

For the first time, researchers show how an electronic nose can distinguish one bat species from another by their smell. Researchers assessed the volatile organic compound composition of bats and identified species-specific smellprint signatures. Read more in CompassLive.

Researchers studied how focal species with similar habitats may be disparately affected by climate and land use changes and may require different conservation actions to preserve habitat linkages in the future.

Sixty-five species and five possible subspecies are in the new state list of Mississippi crayfish. Species lists are organized by counties and watersheds, and a new journal article summarizes unresolved taxonomic issues.

Acorns are crucial to oak regeneration and important food for wildlife. A series of collaborative studies has led to new methods for estimating acorn crops using forest inventory data, as discussed in this video.

An SRS researcher visited Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest to record calls of Brood X cicadas. The recordings were featured on the podcast Forestcast, produced by the Northern Research Station.

The USDA Southeast Climate Hub, hosted by SRS, has developed a series of guides to help landowners and producers prepare for and recover from hurricanes. Guides are available for each southern state and many commodity crops, including pine forests.

A new report reviews the long-term FACE Wood Decomposition Experiment and its findings on wood decomposition processes, interactions with underlaying soil, and contributions to forest carbon cycles (GTR-SRS-262).

HiForm is a tool for monitoring forest change that’s fast and specific enough to meet land managers’ needs for damage assessment after hurricanes, wildfire, or insect defoliation.

Videos about silviculture treatments for American chestnut restoration and oak regeneration are available as part of the National Advanced Silviculture Program, Module 4.

A new journal article analyzes the distribution and drivers of change for planted forests and naturally regenerated forests across 13 southern states. The study uses county-level data from 1968 to 2017. 

The 2021-2022 longleaf pine cone report includes a regional summary of recent and future cone production, trends since 1966, and estimates for several national forests in the Southern Region.

A recent webinar provided an overview of NEPA, the guiding legislation for federal project planning and decision making—including national forest management—that engages the public.

A new technical report describes the FOrest Resource Outlook Model (FOROM), which projects future price, production, consumption, and trade of primary and secondary forest products across various socioeconomic developments. The report supports the Forest Service 2020 Resources Planning Act Assessment (GTR-SRS-254).

Materials science uses forestry, physics, chemistry, and engineering to identify new methods for using wood. Adding value to small trees—which would make thinning small trees financially rewarding – is one of the major goals of this research, as discussed in CompassLive.

A series of new factsheets discusses nontimber forest products—their value, distribution, ecology, and more. Learn more about the economic and ecological contributions of NTFPs on a new webpage. A review of nontimber forest products in the marketplace is also available. 

Researchers developed a molecular test to rapidly, accurately diagnose laurel wilt disease in the field—without the need for lab confirmation.

The 2020 Forest Health Monitoring Report is an annual, national summary of forest conditions and health, with chapters on insect and disease activity, patterns of forest fire occurrence, trends in tree mortality, and more (GTR-SRS-261).

A new publication, based on the proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on the Genetics of Host-Parasite Interactions in Forestry, summarizes tree resistance to insects and diseases (GTR-SRS-252).

An SRS partnership with the National Park Service has saved 95% of the hemlocks in the Cosby area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from the woolly adelgid. Read more in this article in Outside.