What We Do
At the Watershed Agricultural Council’s Forestry Program, we’re always seeking better ways to do what we do. We want to do the best we can to protect water quality and keep forests as forests. To meet that goal, we constantly investigate our work through a combination of in-house and university research.
Research is at the core of how we improve our efforts in the New York City Watershed. In our Forestry Program, we strive to use peer-reviewed methods whenever possible to give us reliable information for making decisions.
Current and ongoing research efforts include
Conservation Awareness Index Survey
Every 5 years, the Forestry Program sends a survey to 3,000 NYC Watershed landowners owning at least 10 forest acres to better understand landowner preparedness to make an informed conservation-based decision about the future of their land. Landowners’ familiarity, knowledge, experience, and connectedness to forestry professionals in the following subject areas are assessed:
- New York Forest Tax Law Program (480-a)
- Conservation Easements
- Timber Harvesting, and
- Estate Planning (Planning for the next forest owner)
Logger Economic Viability
The Forestry Program tracks long-term profitability for a group of loggers working in the NYC Watershed. This involves logger interviews to understand their machine operating and overhead costs. Loggers track their machine hours, production, and revenue job-to-job, and we use a spreadsheet accounting tool called PATH (Planning and Analysis in Timber Harvesting) to estimate the profitability of each job they completed.
Community Science Projects
The Forestry Program helps to coordinate two community science projects at each of our four model forests. Monitoring and Managing Ash (MoMA) assesses ash tree health considering emerald ash borer (EAB). The main goal is to identify lingering ash trees that have EAB resistance so that scientists can grow EAB-resistant ash for future plantings. Assessing Vegetation Impacts from Deer (AVID) uses repeated measurements of tree seedling height to reflect deer browsing intensity. Plots inside deer exclosures can show the efficacy of different types of fences and the level of forest regeneration achievable when deer are controlled.
Learn More
If you want to learn more about any of the current research being conducted, please contact us.
Previous research projects
Past projects have included assessing whether forest management plans influence the use of Best Management Practices (BMPs), whether herbicide and girdling are effective methods for noncommercial thinning, and how much private landowners know about conservation options for their land.
The WAC Forestry Program and its partners have completed a wide range of research projects and evaluations over the years. We have 90 papers and reports covering more than 20 topics, including Forestry BMPs for water quality, logger economic viability, and landowner conservation awareness, to name a few. Browse the Research Library for a brief synopsis of each study or access full-text manuscripts organized by subject area.
Current Forestry Research
Documents and Resources
Current Research |