PINEMAP integrates research, extension and education to provide the tools to enable southern pine landowners and foresters to adapt forest management approaches to increase forest resilience and sustainability under variable climate. Other goals include increasing the efficiency of fertilizers and increasing carbon sequestration. PINEMAP focuses on the 20 million acres of planted pine forests managed by private landowners across the southeastern U.S. These forests provide critical economic and ecological services to U.S. Citizens, as well as providing 5.5% of the jobs across the southeast and more than 16% of global industrial wood. PINEMAP is one of three Coordinated Agricultural Projects funded by the US Department of Agriculture’s National Institutes for Food and Agriculture (NIFA).
SREF, with its focus on regional forestry extension across the southeast, was uniquely positioned to partner to contribute to PINEMAP’s extension group. Extension and education are two of PINEMAP’s six disciplinary aims, the other four are research based and include: silviculture, genetics, modeling and economics. The PINEMAP extension team has started and will continue to develop a range of educational programs (workshops, webinars, factsheets and more), to meet the educational needs of southeastern foresters and to disseminate the latest research from the project. For more information, please go to www.pinemap.org, or email Leslie Boby, lboby@sref.info.
