Current Budgetary Challenges for FS R&D and FIA

1. Current Budgetary Challenges forFS R&D and FIA Richard W. Guldin Director, Quantitative Sciences USDA Forest Service 2011 FIA National Users’ Group Meeting Sacramento. CA

2. BLUF: Bottom Line, Up Front • The current federal budgetary situation is very fluid. • It appears highly likely that a substantial funding reduction will be imposed on the FIA program in FY 2011. • The fluid budgetary environment has led us to some serious rethinking about what the “core FIA program” is that we will deliver in FY 2011 and FY 2012. • If substantial funding reductions become reality, I propose two core strategies to our FIA stakeholders for FYs 2011 & 2012: • Maintain a consistent national program--active in all 50 states • Continue with an annualized inventory • Delivering these two strategies will require us to sharpen the focus of the FIA program by redefining: • The national core data to be collected and • The analyses, reporting, and techniques research to be conducted

3. R&D Budget Overview

4. FY 2012 R&D Program Focus • Maintain critical research on: • Nanotechnology; bio-energy, and bio-mass management • Watershed restoration • Forest restoration and forest resiliency, including selected silviculture, forest management, forest products, and forest operations research • Significant realignments in other research priorities will occur: • Synthesize mature fire research and end it • Focus pest research on invasive species; reduce work on established pests • Reduce recreation research that can be done by others with local forest dollars • Reduce research on traditional game and fish species • Reduce inventory and monitoring research of threatened, endangered, and sensitive species that have reached stable management solutions • Reduce low priority air quality and atmospheric interactions research • Where possible, emphasize research that creates jobs and captures efficiencies

5. FIA Program Funding for FY 2012 • In FY 2010, FIA partners contributed +$7.5 million of cash and in-kind support to the FIA program  9% in additional program funding • In FY 2010, the FIA program provided $13.9 million in grants and cooperative agreements to fund partners to: • Collect data • Develop new inventory methods, and • Conduct analyses • State governments’ funding situations and the FY 2012 proposal puts these partnerships at significant risk

6. FIA Program Highlights For FY 2010 • Active for the first time in all 50 States • Only missing Interior Alaska • Nearly achieved goal of 1998 Farm Bill • Online data less than 2 years old for 42 States plus coastal Alaska • 3-5 years old in FL, NC, and MS • More than 5 years old in NV, WY, NM, LA, interior Alaska, HI • Started double-intensity inventories on National Forests in the South, through Region 8 contributions • Data collection productivity and quality remains high • 19,272 P2 plots visited by field crews; 1,204 included enhanced forest health data • 9% of P2 plots revisited by QA/QC crews

7. More FY 2010 FIA Program Highlights • Federal-State partnership is productive and highly efficient • 392 federal employees • 205 State employees & contractors • 203 publications; 74 in peer-reviewed journals • 10 user group meetings • 423 spatial data requests • 991 expert consultations • 260 weeks of assistance • State reports less than 5 years old: • 18 of 24 NRS States • 10 of 13 SRS States • 3 of 5 PNW States • 3 of 8 RMRS States • 104,676 on-line FIA database downloads

8. Key Projects Completed in FY 2010 • Six-state study for Secretary Vilsack identified renewable energy opportunities • Potential of woody biomass in South Carolina as a sustainable biofuel supply • Maps of young forests supported wildlife conservation in Upper Lakes States • Non-native invasive plant distributions in South were documented in “Top 50 Most Cited Papers” • FIA data showed that structural and compositional diversity have little effect on stand productivity in Ponderosa pine forests • Rebutted a commonly held hypothesis that diverse stands are always more productive • Identified tree and stand-level conditions that promote Phellinustremulae fungus attack in aspen stands • FIA data plus Landsat imagery were used to: • Map forest age in California, Oregon, and Washington; improved estimates and understanding of regional forest carbon dynamics • Make national estimates of biomass losses and accumulation resulting from forest disturbances and regrowth • Lichen community indicator data were used to estimate N-deposition critical loads for western forests

9. Status of FY 2011 FIA Funding • The R&D Appropriation total in HR-1 is exactly the same as the FY 2011 President’s Budget • In the President’s Budget justification, we noted that $2 million of the $5 million reduction was for intensification of FIA plots on/adjacent to Experimental Forests. We intend to implement this reduction and stop EF&R plot intensification. • The remaining $3 million reduction we will need to take will require immediate program adjustments the next 6 months. We intend to alter field work, because half of our program cost is data collection.

10. What We Think Users Want … • Set two prime strategic goals: • Maintain a consistent national program—active in all 50 states • Continue with an annualized inventory • Manage FY 2011 activities towards the future funding outlined in the FY 2012 President’s Budget. Proposals to be considered include: • Critically evaluate what data and analyses we can no longer afford at a reduced funding level • Terminate external research & applications linked to them • Move key forest health measures to the summer P2 sub-panels (e.g., soils, “light” versions of down woody materials and vegetation), because they contribute to carbon analyses • Make other P3 measures regionally optional (e.g., crowns, lichens, ozone), dependent on “soft” funding • Reduce the number of plots measured each year • Are these in sync with users’ thinking? Are there other options?

11. Topics for Discussion • Additional presentations today and tomorrow by FIA headquarters staff and regional program managers will delve more deeply into potential adjustments for FY 2011 and 2012 • We very much value your input on the tactical steps we will propose to take: • To respond to FY 2011 funding levels proposed in HR-1 • To retain flexibility to respond to whatever FY 2012 funding level ultimately emerges • We feel that the urgency of the FY 2011 funding level requires us to take immediate steps this field season • If users have other options they’d like us to consider, now is the time to lay them on the table

12. What Does the Future Hold for FIA? I foresee a different FIA program ...

13. Thank You! Questions?? rguldin@fs.fed.us www.fia.fs.fed.us