The PINEMAP CAP: Mapping the Future of Southern Pine Management in a Changing World.

Pine Integrated Network: Education, Mitigation, and Adaptation Project (PINEMAP) is one of three Coordinated Agricultural Projects awarded in 2011 by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. PINEMAP focuses on the 20 million acres of planted pine forests managed by private landowners in the Atlantic and Gulf coastal states from Virginia to Texas, plus Arkansas and Oklahoma. These forests provide critical economic and ecological services to U.S. citizens. Southeastern forests contain 1/3 of contiguous U.S. forest carbon and form the backbone of an industry that supplies 16% of global industrial wood, 5.5% of the jobs, and 7.5% of the industrial economic activity in the region. PINEMAP’s overall goal is to create, synthesize, and disseminate knowledge that enables southern pine landowners to: manage forests to increase carbon sequestration by 15% by 2030;  increase the efficiency of nitrogen and other fertilizer inputs by 10% by 2030; adapt forest management approaches and plant improved tree varieties to increase forest resilience and sustainability under variable climates.

Outcomes will be achieved through integrated research and education programs. Important features of these programs include:develop breeding, genetic deployment, and innovative management systems to increase carbon sequestration and adapt forest management practices; investigate interactive effects of policy, biology, and climate on forest management; develop and implement extension programming to transfer new management and genetic technologies to corporate and non-corporate landowners; create educational and training programs to educate secondary school teachers and students and undergraduate and graduate students about the relevance of forests, forest management, and climate impacts.

PINEMAP is coordinated and managed by the University of Florida; project collaborators include the following: eight regional university-corporate-governmental research cooperatives whose members manage 55% of the privately owned planted southern pine forestland and produce 95% of the pine seedlings planted each year; over 50 scientists at 11 land grant universities, including three 1890s institutions; the USDA Forest Service; the Southern Regional Extension Forester and associated Extension professionals; secondary school educators and the Project Learning Tree network; state climate offices and the multi-state Southeast Climate Consortium.