UMaine helps relaunch Northeastern States Research Cooperative to support applied regional forest science
New federal funding for research on the region’s forest ecosystem and economy will allow the University of Maine Center for Research on Sustainable Forests (CRSF) to continue co-leadership of the Northeastern States Research Cooperative (NSRC) with Vermont, New Hampshire and New York.
NSRC, created by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont in the 1998 Farm Bill and expanded to include Maine in 2006, received $2 million in the fiscal year 2020 appropriations bill through strong support by Maine’s federal representatives.
Since its inception, NSRC has supported cross-disciplinary, collaborative research on the northern forest and its 26 million acres of working landscape. That research has been led by the U.S. Forest Service and universities across the four Northern Forest states — Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and New York.
Focusing on the ecological, economic and cultural challenges facing the forest, NSRC has awarded more than 300 competitive research grants totaling more than $23 million to over 50 different institutions throughout the region.
In Maine, NSRC has supported more than 50 projects with over $4 million in funding. These projects have included improving management of white pine, enhancing forest landowner decision-support tools, and evaluating potential losses due to spruce budworm.
The revitalized program, which had not received federal funding since 2016, will seek input from business, industry, agency and community leaders to define a research agenda that will support and improve the health of the Northern Forest environment and economy. The expectation is that CRSF will work with institutional counterparts to begin the request for proposal process later this year, with new research projects expected to begin by early 2021.
Contact: Meg Fergusson, 207.581.3794