{"id":11,"date":"2020-05-20T18:54:02","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T18:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.cnr.ncsu.edu\/foresthealthmonitoring\/?page_id=11"},"modified":"2026-11-12T18:59:20","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T18:59:20","slug":"projects","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/research.cnr.ncsu.edu\/foresthealthmonitoring\/projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/research.cnr.ncsu.edu\/foresthealthmonitoring\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/59\/2020\/05\/Abies_balsamea_phanerolepis_CanaanValley_WV38-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a name=\"top\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"#project1\">Forest Health Monitoring national reports<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#project2\">National reporting and documentation<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#project3\">Invasive species patterns and processes<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#project4\">Assessment of tree species vulnerability<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#project5\">Assessing the genetic diversity of tree species at risk<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#project6\">Analyzing urban tree diversity and distributions<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#project7\">Indicators of forest biodiversity and ecosystem function<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a name=\"project1\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Forest Health Monitoring national reports<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program of the U.S. Forest Service is a long\u2011term, national research and monitoring effort focusing on the health of forest ecosystems over time. The U.S. Forest Service cooperates with State forestry and agricultural agencies to conduct FHM activities. This is an interagency program that is designed to assist resource managers and policy makers in managing forest resources in the United States, allocating funds for research and development, and evaluating the effectiveness of environmental policies. FHM national reporting includes an <a href=\"https:\/\/research.cnr.ncsu.edu\/foresthealthmonitoring\/publications\/fhm-national-report\/\">annual national report<\/a> that presents forest health status and trends from a national or multi-State regional perspective using a variety of sources, introduces new techniques for analyzing forest health data, and summarizes results of recently completed Evaluation Monitoring projects funded through the national FHM Program. <a href=\"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/directory\/szlimhin\/\">Simone Lim-Hing<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/directory\/kpandit\/\">Karun Pandit<\/a> serve as co-editors of this annual report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#top\">Return to top of page<\/a><br><a name=\"project2\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">National reporting and documentation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program is a cooperative, long-term, national research and monitoring effort focusing on forest ecosystems. Information is a main product of all FHM activities. The NCSU Forest Health Monitoring team contributes to these national activities by collaborating with other forest scientists from the Forest Service and other federal agencies, state forestry and agricultural agencies, and academia. Members of the team lead and participate in a variety of projects that add knowledge to the discipline of forest health (see other sections on this page), and deliver reporting and communication products to meet the needs of the forest health community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The NCSU Forest Health Team helps lead FHM\u2019s national reporting effort by evaluating the information needs of the forest health community, considering the audience, information needed, timing, and the most useful format. The NCSU team supplies analytical, and technical writing and editing skills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#top\">Return to top of page<\/a><br><a name=\"project3\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Invasive species patterns and processes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Biological invasions pose a major threat to forest ecosystems globally and cause significant ecosystem degradation and economic loss. Research has revealed variation in regional invasion patterns, indicating that the factors affecting invasion dynamics vary across scales and among taxonomic groups. Many small-scale studies have focused on invasion processes and impacts, while only a few have encompassed broader regions. Our understanding about the factors influencing broad-scale invasion patterns is therefore limited. More research needs to include multiple taxonomic groups, to account for the interactions among the three invasion components (invader, recipient system, and environmental drivers), and to consider the spatial and temporal scales of invasion patterns and processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kevinpotter.wordpress.ncsu.edu\/\">Kevin Potter<\/a> is a member of a multi-institutional team addressing these research needs. The group, including ecologists from Purdue University and the USDA Forest Service, has received two National Science Foundation macrosystem biology grants in recent years. Potter is a co-principal investigator of the more recent of these, a $1 million grant funding a project called Modeling Invasive Dynamics Across Scales (MIDAS). This group is remarkably productive, having produced more than 20 peer-reviewed journal articles since 2015; Potter is an author on 14 of these. A recent paper, published in the <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em> in 2019, revealed a positive relationship between tree diversity and nonnative insect and disease pests at low levels of tree diversity in U.S. forests, but a negative relationship between tree diversity and nonnative pest diversity at higher levels of tree diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#top\">Return to top of page<\/a><br><a name=\"project4\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Assessment of tree species vulnerability<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A variety of threats, most importantly climate change and insect and disease infestation, will increase the risk that forest trees could experience population-level or species-level extinction. Species, however, differ in important traits such as life-history strategies and population dynamics, which could drive widely varying responses to potential threats. To address this challenge, <a href=\"https:\/\/kevinpotter.wordpress.ncsu.edu\/\">Kevin Potter<\/a> is helping lead a national effort to implement a framework to prioritize forest tree species for conservation, management and monitoring in the face of multiple threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Scientists and natural resource managers from all three deputy areas of the USDA Forest Service are cooperating on Project CAPTURE (Conservation Assessment and Prioritization of Forest Trees Under Risk of Extirpation), a national multi-scale prioritization of forest tree species and populations that I am coordinating to guide genetic conservation and monitoring. Grounded in genetics principles, Project CAPTURE establishes a framework for the categorization and prioritization of forest tree species for monitoring, conservation and management actions based on identified threats to species and their life history characteristics. It is data-driven and guided by expert opinion, allowing the quantitative grouping of species into vulnerability classes that may require different management and conservation strategies. The categorization is based on vulnerability factors relating to (1) the severity of the threats faced by the tree species, (2) the sensitivity of the species to these threats, and (3) their capacity to adapt to the threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#top\">Return to top of page<\/a><br><a name=\"project5\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Assessing the genetic diversity of tree species at risk<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many forest tree species and populations face serious threats to their long-term viability, most seriously from insect and disease infestation and from the effects of climate change. To conserve the genetic foundations that tree species need to survive and adapt in the face of these threats, forest management decisions must consider how genetic diversity is distributed across species\u2019 ranges. <a href=\"https:\/\/kevinpotter.wordpress.ncsu.edu\/\">Kevin Potter<\/a> has been the lead analyst for range-wide genetic variation studies for several imperiled forest tree species. Most have large distributions; all have required analyzing extensive molecular marker data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Results from studies on these species have influenced management decisions. Characterization of the genetic diversity and structure of two hemlock species (eastern hemlock and Carolina hemlock) is guiding seed collections from genetically significant hemlock populations by the NCSU-based Camcore conservation cooperative. After a ponderosa pine study uncovered evolutionary relationships among species varieties and demonstrated genetic variation of several small and isolated populations, the Bureau of Land Management used the outcomes of this work to inform management activities in the western United States. The results from these studies also have been used to make more realistic predictions of future environmental suitability for ponderosa pine and eastern hemlock by generating separate climate suitability projections for different evolutionary lineages within the species, each of which may have evolved to adapt to different environmental conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Potter is also an active member of the Genetics Working Group in the international Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON). This group is currently assessing how often and in what context genetic diversity are discussed in country-level reports required by the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This is particularly timely and important as we near the deadline of the 2020 CBD Aichi Targets, one of which is aimed at halting genetic erosion and safeguarding genetic diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#top\">Return to top of page<\/a><br><a name=\"project6\"><\/a><br>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Analyzing urban tree diversity and distributions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#top\">Return to top of page<\/a><br><a name=\"project7\"><\/a><br>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Indicators of forest biodiversity and ecosystem function<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Biodiversity conveys numerous benefits to forested ecosystems, including increased productivity and resilience to disturbance. But how should we quantify tree biodiversity in a forest? One way is to simply count the species that live there. A more useful way might be to measure how closely related to each other the species are. Such measures of evolutionary or phylogenetic diversity could more accurately predict the diversity of ecological functions provided by a forest because species that are phylogenetically distinct \u2013 that is, not closely related to other species in the community \u2013 should have traits and provide services that are not offered by species that are more closely related to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kevinpotter.wordpress.ncsu.edu\/\">Kevin Potter<\/a> works to assess the relationship between biodiversity and forest function (including biomass accumulation and resistance to non-native plant invasion) across broad U.S. regions, using complex data from tens of thousands of Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plots. Specifically, he combines this information with a phylogenetic \u201csupertree\u201d, which he assembled for nearly 400 North American tree species, to generate biodiversity metrics that quantify the evolutionary relationships encompassed by the species in forest communities. Studies he authored in <em>Ecological Applications<\/em> in 2012 and <em>Forest Ecology and Management<\/em> in 2014 suggest that evolutionary diversity is a better surrogate for community functional diversity than traditional measures of biodiversity such as species richness. His 2018 paper published in the journal <em>Biological Conservation<\/em>, meanwhile, identifies the most evolutionarily distinct tree species in the United States, and assesses whether conservation areas across the United States adequately protect the evolutionary distinctiveness and rarity of forest tree species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#top\">Return to top of page<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forest Health Monitoring national reports The Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program of the U.S. Forest Service is a long\u2011term, national research and monitoring effort focusing on the health of forest ecosystems over time. The U.S. Forest Service cooperates with State forestry and agricultural agencies to conduct FHM activities. This is an interagency program that is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","ncst_content_audit_display":false,"ncst_backToTopFlag":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.cnr.ncsu.edu\/foresthealthmonitoring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.cnr.ncsu.edu\/foresthealthmonitoring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.cnr.ncsu.edu\/foresthealthmonitoring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.cnr.ncsu.edu\/foresthealthmonitoring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.cnr.ncsu.edu\/foresthealthmonitoring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/research.cnr.ncsu.edu\/foresthealthmonitoring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"https:\/\/research.cnr.ncsu.edu\/foresthealthmonitoring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.cnr.ncsu.edu\/foresthealthmonitoring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}