Forests
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A new fire-mapping online tool is now available for the Southeast. It enables resource managers to improve their regional or local approaches to managing wildfire risk and fire management needs through targeted prescribed burns and training. Fire management helps improve forest ecosystem health, increases timber values, reduces the risk of wildfire damage to life and…
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Ghost forests are areas of trees that were once alive but have died standing in place due to changing conditions like saltier soils or rising water levels. A new study of ghost forests along the East Coast by Rutgers University scientists link the increase in ghost forests to rising sea levels associated with climate change.…
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Here is a thoughtful article about changes that foresters are seeing in some of the forests around the world that have been decimated by wildfires. In a number of places, after a fire comes through, there is no regrowth of trees even after a number of years. This has been attributed to changes in the…
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A lot of the Southeast is covered in forest now. In Georgia alone, about 70 percent of the land is now forested. Producers used to be able to make a good living off of forestry during the housing booms of previous decades, but now they are barely getting by. The Wall Street Journal has a…
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If you keep up with the news, you can’t help but hearing about all the wildfires that have been raging through the western US this year. In particular, some of the fires have been moving through lands where California’s oldest trees, including sequoia, redwood, and Joshua trees, live. Many of these old trees have perished…
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Scientists who study western wildfires have discovered that multi-year droughts and wet periods can have bad impacts on the forests’ ability to renew themselves after a fire. Drought years were particularly hard on the forests’ ability to grow new seedlings. You can read more at Physics Today here.
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If you drive through southeast Alabama or southwest Georgia, you can still see plenty of damage from Hurricane Michael, which hit there in 2018. Researchers with Auburn University’s School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences are currently working on a “Downed Timber Initiative,” which aims to develop new methods of using fallen trees and branches decimated…