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NCSE Forestry Commission Awards $400,000 in Research Funding Washington, D.C., June 23, 2003 - NCSE's National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry (NCSSF) has awarded almost $400,000 to support five research projects in sustainable forestry and biodiversity. The projects are designed to advance the knowledge and tools most directly relevant to forest managers, practitioners and policymakers for improving sustainable forestry practices. The 2003 projects include:
- Land Use History Impact on Biodiversity - Implications for Management Strategies. This project is designed to improve the knowledge base regarding the impacts of past human land use and management on forest structure and biodiversity, as well as the implications of such practices for sustainable forest management. Three separate projects will cover the northeastern, southeastern, and western regions of the United States.
- Calibration of Conservation Theory and Principles Applied at Various Geographic Scales. The goal of this project is to examine the efficacy of conservation biology theories and principles applied to dynamic forests at geographic scales from small sites to large bioregions.
- Risk Management and Decision Support Tools. This project will result in a comparative risk assessment system that lays out tradeoffs involved in policy options that strive to balance risks across space, time and multiple resource values.
Full descriptions of the NCSSF projects, including abstracts, awardees names, and information about the program are available at www.ncssf.org. This is the second year of NCSSF's five-year program in which investigators are competitively selected based on a peer-review of proposals submitted to an open solicitation. Results and tools from several 2002 projects will be available this summer. The topics of the 2004 NCSSF competition will be announced in late December 2003.
The mission of the National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry is to make science more relevant to forest managers and decision makers and to provide solutions that improve forestry practices. The program includes not only traditional research to develop new knowledge but also syntheses and assessments to transform existing information into usable knowledge, and tools for the application of knowledge.
The National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) manages and conducts the NCSSF program for a consortium of sponsors including the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Packard Foundation, National Forest Foundation and the U.S. Forest Service. NCSE re-grants the funds based on the deliberations of a "blue ribbon" commission of prominent scientists and diverse stakeholders.
Fire and Biodiversity Examined at Annual NCSSF Symposium
The National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry hosted its second annual symposium, "Fire, Forest Health and Biodiversity," on June 5-6 in Denver Colorado. The symposium focused on evaluations of current knowledge, and identification of gaps in understanding, of the relationship between fire and biodiversity. Experts in the fields of fire science and ecology addressed the inter-regional variation in fire regimes and fire history, ecological implications of fire, and perspectives on fire management.
The symposium also featured open discussions in which participants addressed gaps in wildfire data and suggested research needs to the Commission. Studies of fire effects on biodiversity - including fire suppression and exclusion, additional research on prescribed burning and fire treatment effectiveness, and making science applicable to on the ground management - were the most commonly cited shortcomings in fire science research.
The event was open to the public and drew more than 100 participants from government, academia, private industry, and non-profit sectors. Speaker information and presentations are available at www.ncssf.org.
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