At the Finley Center: Ongoing and Upcoming Research Projects

By Allyson Muth, Director, James C. Finley Center for Private Forests at Penn State

One of the hallmarks of the research of the Finley Center is that it is rooted in addressing applied issues and challenges facing forests and the people who own and care for them. We want our work to help people take good care of the woods and ensure it meets the needs and values of those who own woodland and that their woodland continues to exist as forest, sustainable and healthy, into the future.

In this quarter, we have been in the throes of compiling the body of work from last year into our 2023 Annual Report, but we’ve also been hard at it sharing results of other research and starting new projects. Here are some highlights:

2021 Forest Landowners Survey—presentations of our findings are dominant in our work as we share results of the most recent statewide survey of woodland owners. With workshops offered so far this year for Bureau of Forestry service foresters and others who support private woodland owners, we are looking ahead to new opportunities to share with other partners and stakeholders. Our work uncovered landowner values, attitudes, and behaviors, as well as how people access resources and assistance, and what might be barriers to that access. We’re hopeful our insights will help inform approaches to educating and supporting the owners of the majority of woodlands in the state.

Forest Landowners Panel Survey—in the field right now is a survey of past participants in previous iterations of the statewide forest landowners survey who still own forestland. We seek to understand how individual landowners’ values, attitudes, behaviors, and access to resources may have changed over time.

Social and Ecological Capacity of Small and Medium Forests for Ecosystem Services—forest modeling of different harvest practices and their outcomes on carbon, wildlife habitat, and biodiversty and work on non-timber forest products’ success under different light conditions are ongoing through the lab of Dr. Margot Kaye. In the next few months, the Finley Center will convene groups of landowners from around the state to participate in focus groups to understand how woodland owners are viewing and addressing changing conditions in their forests. This fall, we anticipate a graduate student joining our team to undertake a project on landowner willingness to adopt different practices that may lead to improved ecosystem services within the landscape.

Baseline Forest Condition Documentation Project—in the next few months, the Finley Center will be convening members of the wider forestry community to undertake a project to use USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data to understand the current condition of our woodlands across the state, and to look at historical data to understand the processes that led to the current condition. The project will model the outcomes of changing competition, deer impacts, and light conditions from forest health challenges and management activities on the landscape to determine a methodology for continued and regular assessment of our forests’ condition, and the complex system and drivers of that system, over time.

Stay tuned for results of all of these efforts!