In spring 2020, the US Forest Service’s Wood Innovations Grant program awarded the SWERI Wood Utilization Team, a $260,000 grant to lead a Wood Utilization Team across three states. The team will focus on increasing forest restoration efforts through the expansion of forest product business clusters in the Southwest.
With this funding, the team plans to build on the research and development infrastructure of three university-based research units that comprise the Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes, or SWERI—the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute, the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute and the ERI at Northern Arizona University—to support the expansion of forest product business clusters through focused workshop training events, applied research studies, and forest product marketing efforts.
Across the Southwest, projects that thin and remove small-diameter trees to restore forest health and prevent catastrophic wildfire are often hindered by a lack of markets for the low-value wood and biomass needed to fund operations. For several years, the Forest Service, industry partners, ecologists, and stakeholders have worked to overcome this barrier to reinvigorate the regional forest products industry and spur forest restoration efforts.
“Funding from the Forest Service’s Wood Innovations Grant program allows us to creatively grow the forest products industry sector and associated markets, which in turn supports forest restoration activities in the Southwest,” said Dr. Han-Sup Han, director of ERI’s forest operations and wood utilization program.
To learn more about the 2020 Forest Service’s Wood Innovations Grants, click here.
And, check out this NAU News story, which details the SWERI Wood Utilization Team project, its team members and project goals.
Working Paper: Opportunities for Application of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Restoration of Pinyon-Juniper Ecosystems of the Colorado Plateau
Pinyon-juniper (PJ) savannas, woodlands, and shrublands of the Colorado Plateau are of major importance, not only as habitat for plant and animal species, but also to local human communities for goods, services, and cultural values, both traditionally and contemporarily. Although an exhaustive ethnobotanical analysis of the flora of the Colorado Plateau has not been conducted, general descriptions of uses and values of more common species in these PJ ecosystems are found in the published literature. Chronic drought, wildfire, and severe insect outbreaks, along with anthropogenic stressors such as intensive livestock grazing, clearing, modifications of fire regimes, and spread of invasive species, have substantially altered ecosystem structure and function. In response, public land managers have called for renewed focus on pinyon-juniper conservation and restoration. Successful management of these systems will target actions that assist recovery of ecological function while simultaneously engaging local human communities, particularly Indigenous nations, that have strong, multigenerational connections to the ecosystem.
Positive drought feedbacks increase tree mortality risk in dry woodlands of the US Southwest
Global increases in temperature and aridity are driving extreme droughts that severely impact dryland ecosystems operating at the margins of plant tolerance. Focusing on the pinyon–juniper woodlands of the US Southwest, researchers used a long-term monitoring network to analyze how recurrent droughts influence tree mortality. Between 1998 and 2023, tree density and stand basal area declined substantially. Since 2014, tree mortality has outpaced new recruitment, and nearly half of the surviving trees have experienced crown dieback. While tree size influenced environmental responses, and local factors like soil organic matter and mycorrhizal fungi provided a protective buffer, the cumulative stress altered woodland demographics. Consequently, these shifts triggered a 28.2% increase in future mortality risk for surviving trees across species. Recurrent droughts have effectively overcome the ecosystem’s natural resilience, proving that consecutive climate events compound long-term vulnerability rather than allowing the system to stabilize.