Southern Forest Futures Project

I attended the Blacksburg, VA public input meeting for the Southern Forest Futures Project on February 26. This project is a follow-up to the very informative Southern Forest Resource Assessment published in 2002, and is being led by the same US Forest Service team of John Greis and David Wear. The project promises to be very useful for those interested in the health and sustainable management of Virginia's forests.

The futures project will develop a number of scenarios. Each scenario will represent possible states of the various forces of change (biological, climatic and human) for forests in the South. Land use and forest conditions will be forecast under each scenario. Analysis will address the implications of these forecasts on ecological sub-regions within the South.

The forests of Virginia fall within the Coastal Plain, Southern Appalachian Piedmont, and the Appalachian Mountains/Cumberland Plateau subregions being used in the analysis.

For more info, visit these websites.
Southern Forest Futures Project http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/futures/
Souther Forest Resource Assessment http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/sustain/