Charting a future for research on the Northern Forest: NSRC partnerships to sustain forest research

Since its inception in 2001 the Northeastern States Research Cooperative (NSRC) has supported cross-disciplinary, collaborative research in the Northern Forest -- a 26-million acre working landscape that is home to more than two million residents and stretches from eastern Maine through New Hampshire and Vermont and into northern New York. A central component of the program has been the importance of the Northern Forest to society and the need for research activities to have relevance and benefit to "the people who live within its boundaries, work with its resources, use its products, visit it, and care about it." As directed by the public law that created it, the NSRC has been a competitive grant program for research on the Northern Forest region, jointly directed through the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station, the University of Vermont, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Maine, and the SUNY College for Environmental Science and Forestry. Between 2001 and 2015 the NSRC has funded 279 completed projects with an additional 43 ongoing projects. These projects have been awarded to 176 individual researchers at 53 unique institutions, organizations, and agencies. The research has ranged over 14 core research interest areas, with the most important interest areas in (1) Forest Management & Productivity; (2) Atmospheric Pollution; (3) Forest Health & Invasive Species; and (4) Climate Change. The NSRC has successfully met its mission for over 15 years. But in recent years it has become apparent that the NSRC needs to re-envision its future. As a consequence, we are taking the 2017-18 year to reimagine what the NSRC might be. In the initial phases of this effort we have reached out to the stakeholder and researcher communities in the Northern Forest region to seek their advice and input. We are currently preparing a retrospective Business Report for the Forest Service, which will summarize the achievements of the NSRC over the last 17 years and in January 2018 we are planning a facilitated workshop to develop a strategic vision for the future. This is a transition that the FEMC has already successfully negotiated. As we consider how the NSRC might change in the future and what it might do and become, it has become clear that closer partnership with the FEMC could be beneficial to both organizations. In this presentation we will explore these benefits and seek input from the meeting participants to help us identify a future path that will best serve the Northern Forest communities and the resources that we all value.