Welcome A message from EFETAC's Director, Danny C. Lee

Welcome to the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center!  Our website provides an in-depth view of our research, our team, and our partners – each extremely important to the Center’s goal of creating cutting-edge research, technology, and tools to address current and emerging forest threats.

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Welcome
News Alert Go Purple and Save an Ash Tree

Purple traps help State and Federal officials to uncover signs of the invasive, tree-killing emerald ash borer beetle.

News Alert Heat Wave Bakes West, Sets Marks & Hits High Note of 113

While the East has been dealing with a powerful Nor’easter that dumped several inches of windswept rain along the coast, and up to 2 feet of snow in the interior, the West has been baking in record heat.

News Alert Rare Late April Snowstorm Knocks Out Power in Northeast

The “winter that wasn’t” is going out the way it came in - with a poorly timed, damaging snowfall event, the likes of which would have been much more welcomed during the actual winter months.

News Alert Biocontrol Agent Tested to Battle Invasive Kudzu Bug

Don't let its common name fool you: The "kudzu bug" isn't to be trusted.

News Alert Minnesota Department of Agriculture unleashing the hounds to find emerald ash borer

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture is partnering with Working Dogs for Conservation to train dogs to sniff out emerald ash borer larvae and ash tree material.

News Alert Let’s End Beetlemania Together

Imagining our communities without trees is hard to fathom. Unfortunately, there is an insect that threatens the trees we love – the Asian longhorned beetle.

News Alert Do Urban 'Heat Islands' Hint at Trees of Future?

City streets can be mean, but somewhere near Brooklyn, a tree grows far better than its country cousins, due to chronically elevated city heat levels, says a new study.

News Alert Recipe for Disaster? Eating invasive species as a conservation strategy could backfire

If people aren’t careful, chowing down on invasive animals and plants could lead to some unpleasant surprises.

News Alert East Coast wildfires whipped up by winds

Wildfires are reported in several states along the eastern seaboard.

News Alert Scientists Clone 'Survivor' Elm Trees

Scientists at the University of Guelph have found a way to successfully clone American elm trees that have survived repeated epidemics of their biggest killer -- Dutch elm disease.

News Alert Secretaries Vilsack and Salazar Announce Readiness for Wildfire Season

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar outlined the federal government's readiness for the wildland fire season to ensure protection for communities and restoration of forests and public lands across the country.

News Alert Global warming threatens pine forests, forcing federal officials to shift strategy

Researchers from the Forest Service — in concert with National Park Service officials and other scientists — are working to steel high-elevation pine forests in the West against the onslaught of climate change.

News Alert USDA Forest Service and NASA release Web-based forest disturbance monitoring tool

The USDA Forest Service's Eastern Forest and Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Centers recently unveiled a product that helps natural resource managers rapidly detect, identify, and respond to unexpected changes in the nation's forests by using web-based tools.

News Alert Flooding disperses invasive plant, fish species

Last year's hurricanes and flooding not only engulfed homes and carried away roads and bridges in hard-hit areas of the country, it dispersed aggressive invasive species as well.

News Alert Feds: Fire Season Off to Slow Start Even As Wildfires Rage in Southwest

Raging wildfires are burning tens of thousands of of acres in Arizona, Nevada and parts of New Mexico and Colorado. But federal agencies overseeing the response say they're not worried — by this time last year, there had already been more fires that destroyed more acres.

News Alert Decades of Data Show Spring Advancing Faster Than Experiments Suggest

Plants are leafing out and flowering sooner each year than predicted by results from controlled environmental warming experiments, according to data from a major new archive of historical observations assembled with the help of a NASA researcher.

News Alert Rainy Days Ahead

Global warming has caused more rain to get dumped on rainy parts of the world and dry regions to dry up even more, according to a Science study.

News Alert Countries Losing Steam On Climate Change Initiatives

Nations are nowhere near being on track to avert significant climate change in the coming decades.

News Alert Indiana Department of Natural Resources: Destructive invasive insect found in state for first time

A tree-killing invasive insect, the hemlock woolly adelgid, was found for the first time in Indiana on a landscape tree in LaPorte County in mid-April.

News Alert Climate forecasting: A break in the clouds

For decades, they have been the biggest sources of uncertainty in forecasts of future climate. But researchers say they are beginning to turn a corner in simulating clouds and aerosols.

News Alert The Warm Winter of 2012 and What to Expect From Winter Moth in Massachusetts

Winter Moth is an introduced pest that has been well established in eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island for about 10 years.

News Alert Ecosystem Effects of Biodiversity Loss Rival Climate Change and Pollution

Loss of biodiversity appears to affect ecosystems as much as climate change, pollution and other major forms of environmental stress, according to results of a new study by an international research team.

News Alert Bark Beetle Management in Southern Pine Forests

The keys to managing bark beetles are maintaining a diversity of healthy, site-adapted tree species and adequate spacing between host trees.

News Alert Drought forecast for Southwest, California 'not optimistic'

Most of the Southwest as well as parts of California and the Southeast can expect drought conditions to worsen through July, federal forecasters said.

News Alert Leave Hungry Pests Behind for Invasive Plant Pest and Disease Awareness Month

USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has dedicated April as Invasive Plant Pest and Disease Awareness Month.

News Alert State of the Climate - April 2012

U.S. temperatures for April third warmest on record; past 12 months and first third of the year were warmest nation has experienced.

News Alert April 2012 heats up as 5th warmest month globally

Unseasonable weather pushed last month to the fifth warmest April on record worldwide, federal weather statistics show.

News Alert US Forest Service targets $40.6M to purchase, restore lands in 15 states

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced the U.S. Forest Service will dedicate $40.6 million for 27 exceptional land acquisition projects in 15 states that will help safeguard clean water, provide recreational access, preserve wildlife habitat, enhance scenic vistas and protect historic and wilderness areas.

News Alert Ash borer crosses Hudson, edging closer to New England forests

A tree-killing invasive insect recently crossed its last major natural eastward obstacle, the Hudson River in New York, and it is now poised to reach New England woodlands.

News Alert Study: Nation’s urban forests losing ground

National results indicate that tree cover in urban areas of the United States is declining at a rate of about 4 million trees per year, according to a U.S. Forest Service study published recently in Urban Forestry & Urban Greening.

News Alert Coaxing American Chestnuts Back to Appalachia

Old swaths of Appalachian forest land left barren by decades of coal mining may find their past is their future, if efforts to restore the American chestnut tree in reclaimed coal fields are successful.

News Alert Nearly One Tenth of Hemisphere's Mammals Unlikely to Outrun Climate Change

A safe haven could be out of reach for 9 percent of the Western Hemisphere's mammals, and as much as 40 percent in certain regions, because the animals just won't move swiftly enough to outpace climate change.

News Alert A Tour of Drought as it Unfolds Across the U.S.

In all, 56 percent of the Lower 48 states were experiencing drought conditions as of May 8, almost twice the area compared to last year at this time, according to data from the U.S. Drought Monitor.

News Alert Statistical analysis projects future temperatures in North America

For the first time, researchers have been able to build a consensus between different regional climate models using spatial statistics.

News Alert Ancient Tree-Ring Records from Southwest U.S. Suggest Today's Megafires Are Truly Unusual

Today's mega forest fires of the southwestern U.S. are truly unusual and exceptional in the long-term record, suggests a new study that examined hundreds of years of ancient tree ring and fire data from two distinct climate periods.

News Alert Oak wilt season arriving earlier due to unusually warm spring

Forest health experts say unseasonably warm weather across Wisconsin is raising concerns that oak wilt, a serious and almost always fatal fungal disease of red oaks, will likely appear sooner than normal and encourage landowners to stop pruning oaks from now through the end of July.

News Alert Exotic Hemlock-Killing Insect Found in Berrien County, MI

The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development confirmed an infestation of the hemlock woolly adelgid in Berrien County.

News Alert Forest Insects and Diseases Arrive in US Via Imported Plants

Almost 70 percent of the most damaging non-native forest insects and diseases currently afflicting U.S. forests arrived via imported live plants.

News Alert Collaboration on forest restoration projects key to sustainability

In testimony on Capitol Hill, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell emphasized the importance of collaboration in developing restoration projects on national forests and grasslands.

Recent Publications view all recent publications
Page Century-scale responses of ecosystem carbon storage and flux to multiple environmental changes in the southern United States pdf
Page Widespread inbreeding and unexpected geographic patterns of genetic variation in eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), an imperiled North American conifer pdf
Page Trends over time in tree and seedling phylogenetic diversity indicate regional differences in forest biodiversity change pdf
Page Trade-associated pathways of alien forest insect entries in Canada pdf
Page Southern Research Station Global Change Research Strategy 2011-2019 pdf
Page Potential alternatives to classical biocontrol: Using native agents in invaded habitats and genetically engineered sterile cultivars for invasive plant management pdf
Page Latitudinal shifts of introduced species: possible causes and implications pdf
Page Global survey of anthropogenic neighborhood threats to conservation of grass-shrub and forest vegetation pdf
Page Fragmentation of forest communities in the eastern United States pdf
Page Geographical, socioeconomic, and ecological determinants of exotic plant naturalization in the United States: insights and updates from improved data pdf
 
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