forestry

When you think of energy and mineral production, you don’t normally think about the USDA Forest Service. Green mountainsides, birch tree canopies, or pine-lined roadways may come to mind.

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, and Forest Service Interim Chief Vicki Christiansen briefed members of Congress yesterday on what to expect in the coming fire season. (To view photos from yesterday’s briefing, please view the 2018 Fire Briefing and MOU Signing Flickr album)

The USDA Forest Service Community Forest and Open Space Conservation Program (CFP) partners with local governments, Indian tribes, and qualified nonprofit organizations to acquire and protect forestlands that are important for people and the places they call home.

Air Quality Awareness Week raises mindfulness about the importance of air quality issues. The USDA Forest Service commemorates the week and its 2018 theme “Air Quality Where You Are” with partners. This year, the Forest Service is featuring one area where air resource management is essential - wildland firefighting.

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.

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.