Southeastern US Updates

Quick Access to Past Updates

Publication Updates

September 2024

General Updates

  • Dr. Dave Carter left Virginia Tech for a position at Michigan State University. Tim Albaugh is serving as the interim co-director at VT.

  • Dr. Rachel Cook is on parental leave until the new year. Professor Emeritus Barry Goldfarb will be serving as the interim co-director at NCSU during this time. 

  • Former FPC graduate student, Brody Hall, has been hired as a program coordinator for the FPC and the NCSU Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources. He will be assisting with the administrative needs of the cooperative. 

  • Tim Albaugh, Matthew Sumnall, Otávio Campoe, Rafael Rubilar, Daniel Bozo, Vicent Ribas Costa, Ben Rose, and Sarah Puls attended IUFRO 2024 in Stockholm, Sweden, and many of our researchers gave presentations at the session titled Strategies and challenges for improving commercial forest plantations productivity and sustainability in North and South America.

  • While in Stockholm, Tim Albaugh and Otávio Campoe participated in a research review of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences with Urban Nilsson and Emma Holmstrom.

  • In August 2024, Fernanda Leite Cunha (UFLA- PhD student) traveled to Raleigh to work with the NC State FPC team as a Fulbright Scholar. In collaboration with Dr. Rachel Cook and Dr. Justin Baker, she will develop carbon life cycle modeling for paper and cellulose products produced in Brazil and investigate their impact on climate change mitigation.

  • Through the support of the Gunnar and Lillian Nicholson Fund, NCSU PhD student, Ben Rose, spent the summer in Umeå, Sweden studying the role of soil fungi in regeneration of Scots pine under long-term experimental nitrogen addition. This work was done in collaboration with researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Read more here.

Publications

  • Ribas-Costa et al. 2024a: Published a manuscript that leverages the use of USGS LiDAR across the Southeast for loblolly pine site index mapping: Modeling dominant height with USGS 3DEP LiDAR to determine site index in even-aged loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantations in the southeastern US. 

    See: https://doi.org/10.1093/forestry/cpae034 

  • Ribas-Costa et al. 2024b: Sent the paper that models site index in loblolly pine forests site index in the Southeast out for review:  Nature vs. nurture: drivers of site productivity in loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) forests in the southeastern US. 

FPC team at the IUFRO International Conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

Tim Albaugh speaking at IUFRO 2024

Sean Bloszies pouring fertilizer into fertilizer application drone.

March 2024

General Updates

  • The 2024 FPC Annual Meeting will be held at the Friday Center (Chapel Hill, NC) from August 20 to 22. More details will be made available soon.

  • Registration for June 11-13, 2024 CAFS and NCASI Biometrics working group in Madison, WI is open! More info here.

  • On March 18, 2024, Sarah Puls (NCSU) successfully defended her thesis, titled Modeling Carbon and Climate Impacts from Harvested Wood Products in Loblolly Plantations in the Southern US (Audio Recording and Slides).

    • Sarah is actively seeking job opportunities in forestry, greenhouse gas modeling, and related fields, with a preference for positions based near Boulder, CO. Sarah can be contacted by email: sjpuls@ncsu.edu

  • Jacob Bost (NCSU) Master’s Defense on Remotely Sensing Carbon in Natural Areas of Hofmann Forest is tentatively scheduled for April 24, 2024 at 10am.

  • In the fall, Drew Martin will be joining the NCSU team as a master’s student in forestry. He will be providing both administrative and field support.

  • Maria Higuita (NCSU) and two additional students received Zobel and Laarman funding to resample the 300 Eucalyptus sites in Brazil this summer.

  • Michael Farmer, an undergraduate researcher with the FPC at NCSU, received a travel scholarship to spend the summer with Rafael in Chile.

  • Gunjan Barua received a scholarship to cover his PhD from Virginia Tech. He is utilizing archived LiDAR data from “The Big Flight” in 2017 to assess the accuracy of a LiDAR-based growth and yield estimate for whole stands.

  • $40,000 was awarded to Virginia Tech via the Acorn Alcinda Foundation for plantation silviculture research.

Field Work

  • Annual tree measurements of the TX RW29 Variable Rate trial were completed by Jacob Hackman and Ivan Raigosa this winter. Work is underway by FPC to measure trees in plots at the NC RW29.

  • Work is underway by FPC to measure trees in plots at the NC RW99 Calcium trials.

  • We plan to complete installation at 284401 (AR) the first week of April and at 281502 (GA) the last week of April.

  • Most of our contracted measurements are complete and the outstanding ones should be completed shortly. 

  • Three RW31 (Funga study) sites with VDOF will be installed on March 22. 

  • 15N foliar samples were collected.

  • We are in the process of coordinating a LiDAR acquisition with Ayres Engineering and Duke Forest.

Jakob Hackman (NCSU Post-doc) taking RW28 soil samples in Brantley County, Georgia

Figure from Sarah Puls’s research showing the flow of harvested wood product carbon from southwide loblolly and shortleaf pine timber harvested in 2020.

Drew Martin: incoming master’s student at NCSU

New system of for tagging trees using QR codes has been employed at the RW 284501 site (Alabama)

December 2023

NC State

  • Jacob Hackman successfully defended his PhD, submitting three papers, one of which has been accepted so far. He is currently working in the NCSU FPC lab as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar. However, he is on the job market and you can contact him at jjhackma@ncsu.edu.

  • Rachel Cook took a “scholarly leave of absense” (aka sabbatical) from Jan-June 2023. During this time, while visiting Otávio Campoe in Brazil, she completed the first manuscript detailing the FPC soil classification system or “SPOT” code. It is under review in Forest Ecology and Management. She also spent time in Spain with PhD student Vicent Ribas-Costa and his co-advisor Aitor Gaston at the Technical University of Madrid.

  • Rachel Cook finished her term as Editor-in-Chief for Forest Ecology and Management.

  • In collaboration with TIP and Camcore, we submitted a grant proposal to further our work in assessing loblolly pine biomass with drones.

  • In collaboration with Dr. Kevin Garcia, a rhizosphere ecologist In the Dept of Crops and Soils, we submitted a grant to NSF to further explore fungal microbiome acquisition of P and K.

  • Two new graduate students, Ben Rose and Maria Higuita, joined the NCSU FPC lab as PhD students to further explore the fungal microbiome and its effects on nutrient uptake.

  • Vicent Ribas-Costa (featured in the grad highlights section) spent July-Oct 2023 working in the FPC lab creating a southeast-wide, intensively managed loblolly plantation site index map with a subset of FPC Full Members. Dominant height information was retrieved from public USGS LiDAR data.

General Updates

  • Virginia Tech hosted the 2023 FPC Annual Meeting in Blacksburg, VA (view past presentations). We had 73 attendees in person and 70 on zoom.

  • The first ever joint Forest Productivity Cooperative - Tree Improvement Program - Plantation Management Research Cooperative contact meeting was held in Jekyll Island, Georgia from November 29 to 30 with 94 attendees!

  • Field measurement season is underway! We plan to measure or complete an installation at 26 sites in winter/spring 2023-2024. This includes two new RW28 P carryover sites in Arkansas and Georgia.

  • Dave Carter and Rachel Cook visited FPC members across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Latin America this fall.

  • The Center for Advanced Forestry Systems (CAFS) had the next to last NSF-funded meeting in Louisville, KY in June. Plans are underway to sustain CAFS as an organization after the center officially graduates from the IUCRC NSF program.

Virginia Tech

  • Jacob Hackman successfully defended his PhD, submitting three papers, one of which has been accepted so far. He is currently working in the NCSU FPC lab as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar. However, he is on the job market and you can contact him at jjhackma@ncsu.edu.

  • Rachel Cook took a “scholarly leave of absense” (aka sabbatical) from Jan-June 2023. During this time, while visiting Otávio Campoe in Brazil, she completed the first manuscript detailing the FPC soil classification system or “SPOT” code. It is under review in Forest Ecology and Management. She also spent time in Spain with PhD student Vicent Ribas-Costa and his co-advisor Aitor Gaston at the Technical University of Madrid.

  • Rachel Cook finished her term as Editor-in-Chief for Forest Ecology and Management.

  • In collaboration with TIP and Camcore, we submitted a grant proposal to further our work in assessing loblolly pine biomass with drones.

  • In collaboration with Dr. Kevin Garcia, a rhizosphere ecologist In the Dept of Crops and Soils, we submitted a grant to NSF to further explore fungal microbiome acquisition of P and K.

  • Two new graduate students, Ben Rose and Maria Higuita, joined the NCSU FPC lab as PhD students to further explore the fungal microbiome and its effects on nutrient uptake.

  • Vicent Ribas-Costa (featured in the grad highlights section) spent July-Oct 2023 working in the FPC lab creating a southeast-wide, intensively managed loblolly plantation site index map with a subset of FPC Full Members. Dominant height information was retrieved from public USGS LiDAR data.

Group Photo at 2023 Annual Meeting in Blacksburg, VA

Ben Rose (NCSU PhD Student) taking RW28 samples

Visit with Jordan Lumber - Troy, NC

Visit with Molpus Woodlands Group - Valdosta, GA