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If you are looking for inexpensive, fun and healthy recreational activities in the great outdoors, then look no further than our national forests and grasslands.

As part of the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station’s Recovery Act program, the Station’s Focused Science Delivery Program has entered into an agreement with the University of Washington’s School of Forest Resources to create leadership and learning opportunities for Native Americans pursuing graduate degrees in the forestry sciences.

More than 1,300 people gathered at the Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area in Golden Pond, Ky., during the annual Hummingbird Festival, where they learned about the ruby-throated variety and how to help them survive the long migration from the eastern U.S. and southern Canada to Mexico and Central America.

When I was a kid, there was one category for bees – “the stinging kind.” Fear of being stung wouldn’t allow me to consider variations among the swarms that patrolled playgrounds. The only thing that made bees tolerable was … the honey.

The Southwestern Region of the U.S. Forest Service worked with federal, state and local agency partners to host two fire and flood recovery workshops providing communities in Arizona affected by fires and floods with a forum to learn about available funding and technical assistance opportunities.

The workshops, held in Scottsdale and Eager, AZ, were open to individual homeowners, business owners, community leaders and affected Tribes of recent fires in Arizona.

The U.S. Forest Service's Forest Legacy Program, working with Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, the Trust for Public Land, and the Nature Conservancy, and local groups helped permanently protect more than 10,000 acres of Montana forest land on Wednesday, July 27, protecting it for wildlife habitat and future generations of Americans.

As a disabled Vietnam Veteran, Daniel stated, “my greatest honor was having the opportunity to participate with Missing-in-Action work by returning to Vietnam and Laos assisting in recovery efforts of fellow soldiers.”

For over 15 years, Daniel has worked as a Tribal Relations Program Manager on the San Bernardino National Forest in California.  He thinks of himself as an ambassador for the forest representing the federal government working with tribes.

Forests Inside Out! is a partnership of the U.S. Forest Service, World Forestry Center, and the Inner City Youth Institute. The program’s activities are structured around "Project Learning Tree," a nationally recognized curriculum that is aimed at fostering an understanding of how forests and the environment work. Partially funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it provides outdoor education opportunities to students from underserved communities.

“Nothing compares to getting students outside,” said Rob Pierce, education director with the World Forestry Center, one of the program’s sponsors. “And, it’s important to give those who have never had the opportunity a chance to make that connection.”

In August 2009, a total of $11.4 million in U.S. Forest Service Recovery Act funds were made available to the State of Maine for grants to help rural, economically depressed counties support the conversion of heating systems to wood/dual-fuel heating systems for an estimated 15 public buildings.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

In forests, climate change ramps up stress already occurring from extreme weather events, disease and insect outbreaks, catastrophic wildfires, and invasive species. Resilient forests are better able to absorb stress without compromising the services they afford. In the same way that good sleep, healthy diet, and regular exercise make a person resilient (though not immune) to illness, forests can be helped towards resiliency by management practices that focus on sustaining or restoring ecological integrity in relation to future conditions. While neither the many threats to forests nor the management approaches available to abate them are new to forest managers, climate change introduces additional pressure and the need for the rapid translation of emerging science into forest management practice.