Northern States Research Cooperative Releases Business Report
News Release April 19, 2018
Northeastern States Research Cooperative (NSRC)
Releases Business Report Encompassing 16 Years of
Scientific Contributions to Northern Forest Research
Burlington, VT; Durham, NH; Orono, ME; Syracuse, NY — The Northeastern States Research Cooperative (NSRC) State Directors are pleased to announce the release of their comprehensive report on the program’s contributions to generation of knowledge about the environment and the economy of the Northern Forest over the past 16 years. Since its inception, the NSRC has funded 335 projects, engaging 50 different institutions, agencies, and organizations across the northeast. NSRC funded projects have supported 176 individual researchers and generated over 300 peer-reviewed papers. The knowledge and information from these projects have been disseminated in workshops, webinars, and other products that have reached thousands of community members, business leaders, agency staff, and other researchers.
The NSRC is a competitive grant program for Northern Forest research, authorized by Federal legislation (Public
Law 105-185), with allocations to the program directed by the USDA Forest Service. It has been jointly directed through the Forest Service Northern Research Station and a designated institution in each of the four Northern Forest States (Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont, the University of New Hampshire in cooperation with the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation in New Hampshire, the Center for Research on Sustainable Forests at the University of Maine, and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry). Since its inception in 2001, the NSRC has been a critically important source of funding for applied forest research and outreach efforts throughout the Northern Forest, but Federal budget cuts led to the suspension of the NSRC in 2017. However, the NSRC directors continue to explore ways to secure funding for a revamped program. Research projects funded by the NSRC have encompassed topics in atmospheric pollution, forest management and productivity, land use planning, forest ecology, forest health and invasive species, recreation and tourism, energy and carbon, climate change, community and landowner engagement, water and watersheds, economy of the Northern Forest region, as well as wildlife, forest products, and conservation and biodiversity.
The dynamics of the Northern Forest economy and ecology are complex as a result of shifting landowner patterns, changing markets, and evolving environmental threats and, as a consequence, the NSRC’s role has never been more crucial. Now at a pivotal point in its history, with new challenges (both environmental and economic) to address and new opportunities to explore, this report showcases its 16-year record of achievement, vision, and strategic planning and addresses how the NSRC might evolve in the future to continue to support relevant Northern Forest research that will benefit the people who live there, work with its resources, use its products, visit it, and care about it.
The NSRC Business Report is now available on the NSRC website.
Contacts:
William “Breck” Bowden, University of Vermont (breck.bowden@uvm.edu)
William H. McDowell, University of New Hampshire (bill.mcdowell@unh.edu)
David Newman, SUNY-ESF (dnewman@esf.edu)
Aaron Weiskittel, University of Maine (aaron.weiskittel@maine.edu)