Increase understanding of forest disturbances, their interactions and impacts to better able forest managers to sustain the productivity and function of Southern Ecosystems.
Forest disturbance is any force that kills at least one tree. These forces can be either natural or human caused. Disturbance occurs across a range of scales from the local, a single tree struck by lightning, to the landscape, entire forests impacted by major hurricanes or largbe wildfires. Smaller scale events are more frequent and more evenly distributed while major catastrophic events tend to be infrequent, isolated events. The disturbance regime for a forest type is compsed of all of these different sized events and their variations in time and space across the landscape. Understanding these disturbances and disturbance regimes, and how the forest community responds to and is shaped by them is a key element informulating proper management plans for the forest ecosystems in the South. We must also know how management activities, that is artificial disturbances like tree removeals, prescribed burning or vegetation manipulation mimic and interact with natural disturbance regimes to ensure that our forest are being managed to produce the results desired today without sacrificing the sustainability of our forests.
The SRS 4104 Unit is physically Located on Carlton St., right after Aderhold Hall Building (on the University of Georgia Campus).
Our mailing address is:
320 Green Street Athens, GA 30602 - USA. for questions call: (706) 559.4290