Recent News Items:

Committee Hearing: Global Climate Change Impact on Wildfires. September 24, 2007. Full Committee Hearing: To consider scientific assessments of the impacts of global climate change on wildfire activity in the United States. For more information, click here.

New Publication: Conserving Biodiversity Through Sustainable Forestry. This new guide from the National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry includes ERI contributions in the Southwest section of Chapter 4, which discusses old-growth forests and biodiversity. For pdf of book, click here: Conserving Biodiversity Through Sustainable Forestry PDF.

Association for Fire Ecology Regional Conference 2008 Fire in the Southwest: Integrating Fire into Management of Changing Ecosystems. January 28-31, 2008 in Tucson, Arizona. For more information, see http://www.humboldt.edu/swfire/

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano's Statewide Strategy for Restoring Arizona’s Forest. The 20-year plan calls for increased funding to implement landscape-scale ecological restoration of Arizona’s now fire-prone forests, protect Arizona’s citizens and infrastructure, and promote wood products industries that can utilize small-diameter timber and biomass. Click here for the Governor’s press release. The strategy is available at http://www.azforests.org/

A Wood Supply Study Group is gathering and analyzing data that will:

• Quantify ponderosa pine wood supply by size-class across a significant portion of the Mogollon Rim of Arizona;
• Estimate the volume of woody material that would be removed following collaboratively developed treatment scenarios;
• Survey and recommend forest growth models to inform forecasted increases in wood volume; and
• Develop a database of existing harvesters, processors, and users in the area.