Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station

Recent advances in the production of nano-scale materials from renewable forest-based resources provide new opportunities to positively affect the nation’s economy and overcome the shortcomings of other nano-scale materials that require imported rare earth metals, need high energy inputs, and are difficult to scale up. Novel renewable forest-based nanocomposites may enable the development of new […]

The improved ability to evaluate suitability of Maine wood species for new markets and applications can help provide consistent demand for wood from sustainably managed Maine forests, which in turn will help sustain the economies of rural communities that rely on the forest products industry. The continued viability of a vibrant cluster of forest products […]

Those most interested in the information produced from this project will be forest managers of approximately 10 million acres of large, privately owned forestland in northern Maine. These managers and landowners provide the raw material that supports Maine’s forest products-based economy, which has an annual 8 billion dollar direct and indirect economic impact on the […]

Maine’s forests have reached a stage of unprecedented importance to the state’s residents, but are also experiencing natural (climate change, introduced pests) and anthropogenic (harvesting, air pollution) stresses with no historical precedent. These forests cannot simply be exploited economically for forest products without serious reductions in their ability to sustain all the values society has […]