forestry

More and more communities are now near or within forests. In fact the area where unoccupied land and human development meet has a name and it’s called the Wildland Urban Interface, or WUI.

White Mountain Apache tribal member Gregg Henry hiked along the southwest landscape of the Tonto National Forest in Arizona with the specific intention to identify and record sacred places.

Since Congress overhauled the federal tax code in December 2017, forest landowners and timber business owners have scrambled to figure out how the new changes will affect them in 2018.

At the USDA Forest Service’s Forest Products Laboratory (FPL), researchers sometimes get a little destructive. They bend and break wood samples of all sizes, and even shoot lumber out of a cannon at 100 miles per hour.

International Day of Forests is a day to celebrate the significant contributions of the world’s forests. The U.S. Forest Service commemorates the day and its 2018 theme “Sustainable Cities” with all our domestic and international urban partners. This year, the Forest Service is proud to feature a partner program in Egypt.

Measuring one million times less than the width of a human hair, graphene is harder than diamonds and 200 times stronger than steel. Small, strong, and flexible, it is the most conductive material on earth and has the potential to charge a cell phone in just five seconds or to upload a terabit of data in one. It can be used to filter salt from water, develop bullet-stopping body armor, and create biomicrorobots.

When Holly and Barry Mawby arrived on their farm in Esmond, North Dakota in 2011, they discovered windbreaks that had not been cared for in decades. They quickly realized that they were in jeopardy of losing what little protection they had from the brutal winds.

Home to the premier restricted military airspace for unmanned aircraft system training in the western U.S., Army base Fort Huachuca supports training for personnel from the Air Force, Marine Corps, and U.S. Border Patrol. But it also serves as an example of successful mixed-use wildlands conservation, including healthy forests and grasslands, sustainable water resources, rural communities and economies, wildlife habitat, and recreation and tourism.

From 2006 through 2016, more than 100 million trees died in California due to the combined impacts of drought and bark beetles. Although tree mortality is part of a natural life cycle, at a massive level it can lead to adverse economic and social effects. So many dead and dying trees increase the risk of wildfire and threaten lives and property.

Sustaining the nation’s forests to provide lasting benefits to the people of the United States is at the core of the USDA Forest Service’s mission, and the agency is building the tools and data to support this mission. Specifically, Forest Service scientists actively monitor and assess the sustainability of the nation’s forests through the Sustainability Assessment Program, an effort that gathers and tracks information on forest conditions across the country. This information in turn enables informed discussions about sustainability in domestic and international circles.