July 2018
Welcome to the Family Forest Research Center newsletter. Here, you will find updates on our research, publications, and products.
Family Forest Research Center Happenings
  • Graduate Student Update:
  • Helena Murray nears the end of her time with the FFRC and has compiled a report assessing the economic contributions of the USFS Forest Legacy Program. Check out her recent publication here FLP Report
  • Meg Harrington has completed the interview portion of her project. She has been traveling around Vermont talking to landowners to record their thoughts on landowner assistance programs.
  • We welcomed a new member to the team, Emma Sass. Her previous job was Research Technician at the University of Vermont, where she also received her MS in 2017.
  • We said good-bye to Sarah Butler, who has moved on to new things in Canada. We will miss her.
  • Kristin Floress has made great progress working with the Chicago Region Trees Initiative (CRTI) helping with a mail campaign to aid landowners remove buckthorn removal and restore native oaks in Illinois.
  • In the fall of 2018, we sent out the NWOS to an intensified sample of minority landowners across the South. This group has been underrepresented in our respondent group and with this focused
FFRC team at the "Grand" Meeting in Amherst, May 2018
From Left to Right: Brett Butler, Stephanie Snyder, Sarah Butler, Jesse Caputo, Kristin Floress, Paul Catanzaro, Marla Lindsay, Emily Huff, Helena Murray
Not Pictured: Meg Harrington, Emma Sass, Amanda Robillard
National Woodland Owner Survey Update
In the past two years, the FFRC sent out over 50,000 National Woodland Owner Surveys to rural land owners! As of now, our cooperation rate is 41% and responses are still coming in. Currently, we have a crack team of undergrads from UMASS processing the returned surveys. If you like to see the summary and state-specific statistics from our last cycle, please click link below.


NWOS - Urban
  • National Land Owner Survey - the Urban survey takes off! We have completed our survey in Baltimore and will be sending out to four more cities in 2019. This survey will give the FFRC and colleagues a chance to characterize urban landowners perceptions of community & green spaces as well as land uses and knowledge of local services.
  • During 2018, the FFRC sent out the first Urban Landowner Survey to some of the lucky citizens of Baltimore. In conjunction with our colleagues at the Northern Research Station, this survey contacted approximately 1000 landowners to increase our understanding who owns these urban greenspaces and why, how they use them and what they intend to do with them. The most recent tally puts us at a 23% return rate.
NWOS Large Corporate
  • We have conducted an assessment of large forest ownerships, aka the Corporate survey.
  • This survey was sent to corporate landowners with holdings greater than 45,000 acres. This survey was sent to 215 contacts across the US and Canada.
  • Respondents were asked to report their total forest holdings, management objectives, specific management practices among other questions.
  • Currently, our cooperation rate is 39%!
Send out schedule for our Corporate Survey
Recent Publications......

Family-forest Owner Decisions, Landscape Context, and Landscape Change. 2018. Landscape and Urban Planning. KP Bell, M Markowski-Lindsay, P Catanzaro, J Leahy.

Factors Associated with Family Forest Owner Actions: A Vote-Count Meta-Analysis. 2018. Landscape & Urban Planning. K Floress, ES Huff, S Snyder, A Koshollek, S Butler, S Allred.

Characteristics of Successful Volunteer-led Urban Forest Tree Committees in Massachusetts. 2018. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. R Harper, ES Huff, D Bloniarz, S DeStefano, C Nicholson.

In Forest & Intact: Designing Future Use of Family-Forest Owned Land. 2018. Journal of Forestry. M Markowski-Lindsay, P Catanzaro, K Bell, D Kittredge, E Markowitz, J Leahy, BJ Butler, A Milman, S Allred.

The Role of Gender in Management Behaviors on Family Forest Land in the US. 2018. Journal of Forestry. S Butler, ES Huff, S Snyder, BJ Butler, M Tyrrell.

For a complete list of our publications, please visit the website.
Tools for landowners and professionals
The Family Forest Research Center webpage has a number of resources for landowners.

  • Find a public forester in your state
  • Tools to help explore and discover how to manage your woodlands
  • Our very own Family Forest Owner Literature Database
NWOS Table Maker 3.0
The USFS NWOS webpage also has resources for landowners and professionals alike

  • The NWOS Table Maker 3.0 allows users to create customized summary tables of NWOS data
Family Forest Research Center | | 1.800.233.3372 | [email protected] | familyforestresearchcenter.org