9. FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES

The growth potential of southern pines planted in the southeastern United States is very high, much higher than commonly thought just a few years ago. Our challenge now is to develop and implement the appropriate silvicultural systems to realize this potential in a cost-effective and environmental sustainable manner. The Forest Nutrition Cooperative is aggressively pursuing several opportunities for improving plantation growth and value through the management of site resources including:

• quantifying soil nutrient and water supplies and how they are affected by silvicultural practices,
• developing and implementing new techniques to assess resource limitations by integrating spatially explicit spectral reflectance imagery, soils, geology, and climatic data,
• identifying sites where resources other than N and P are limiting growth and developing the appropriate prescriptions to ameliorate these limitations,
• understanding how resource availability and plant biochemistry interact to affect wood quality, stem quality, and susceptibility and resistance to insects and diseases,
• investigating use of more effective fertilizers and other nutrient sources to ameliorate nutrient limitations,
• developing advanced growth and yield models and decision support systems that accurately reflect silvicultural treatment impacts, and
• understanding the impacts of intensively managed plantations within a landscape context.

The linkages among the applied research, fundamental research, and continuing education efforts at the Forest Nutrition Cooperative provide an excellent environment for addressing pertinent research questions and immediately incorporating research results into management strategies. These close linkages are the hallmark of our cooperative program, and coupled with our extensive field trial base, position the Forest Nutrition Cooperative to continue a leadership role in developing integrated silvicultural systems approaches for plantation management.

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