Forests are essential to our nation’s economy and ecosystem health and are a major economic engine in the United States producing over $300 billion in timber and forest products annually and roughly four percent of the manufacturing gross domestic product. The industry directly employs 950,000 workers (Jolley et al. 2020). In addition, forests provide innumerable critical ecosystem services to our society, for example, 60 percent of the country’s freshwater flows from forests, and insect pollinators of food crops and valued wildlife reside in our forests, helping to nourish the nation in body and spirit.  

However, our forests are threatened by several factors that are widespread and linked in complex ways. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service, across the nation more than 8.6 million acres of forests were dying from insects and diseases in 2017, in part because of how these pests interacted with changes in climate. Recurring southern pine beetle (SPB) (Dendroctonus frontalis Zimmerman) outbreaks threaten the South’s $200 million forest product industry (Price et al. 1992, Clarke and Nowak 2009). Invasive pests have effectively eradicated entire species (e.g., American elm (Ulmus americana L.) and chestnut (Castanea dentata L.) (Merkle et al. 2007). Today laurel wilt is decimating multiple species in the Lauraceae family across the southeastern United States, including commercial avocado (Galko et al. 2019). The emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire) is expanding from the devastated ash trees of the Midwest to the western and southeastern United States (Kovacs et al. 2010). In the southeastern United States, outbreaks of pitch canker and needlecast diseases, caused by Fusarium circinatum and Lecanosticta acicola, respectively, have affected millions of acres in recent years, with the virulence of needlecast being a new phenomenon (Quesada et al. 2019, Pandit et al. 2020). The Asian longhorned beetle, Anoplophora glabripennis, was present for several years in South Carolina before its detection in 2020 (Coyle et al. 2021). Without a response from society, the scientific community expects threats from both native and invasive pests to grow in frequency and severity.  

The threats to southern and eastern forests come from multiple interacting phenomena. Climatic factors interact with native and invasive pests and affect rates of invasion (Ungerer et al. 1999), tree sensitivities to pests (Klockow et al. 2018), and potential pest range (Lombardo et al. 2018). Changes in climate may also affect survival and virulence of current pathogen strains, affecting host susceptibility (Quesada et al. 2019), such that strains with low survival and virulence under current conditions might be favored by higher temperatures, thus becoming a threat under future climate scenarios. Efforts to identify and respond to these factors require extensive networks of vested institutions and individuals, ranging from private landowners who might first identify an issue, to the academic or government researchers and agencies who can initiate a response (Brawner et al. 2019). Making sure the response of society is equitably distributed among stakeholders also requires diversity among the types of network connections. The response capacity and commitment of the people within these networks can modify how destructive a climatic or pest-driven phenomenon might be.  

The current rate of new, emerging threats overburdens our infrastructure resulting in prioritization that has unintended consequences. Moreover, we are prone to focus outreach on those stakeholders with significant resources, as they are more active land managers. However, this has contributed to the well-documented phenomenon of underrepresented groups being further marginalized when disaster strikes (Miner et al. 2021). Quickly identifying recommendations for landowners, and offsetting biases in their dissemination, requires the merging of scientific disciplines in ways that are currently beyond the power of single institutions. Over the last century, billions of trees have died because of changing climate and invasive and native pests but society still offers forests as a solution to climate change through harvesting trees for bioenergy or by planting a trillion trees to remove atmospheric CO2 (Lippke et al. 2021). How can we expect forests to provide these services when efforts to protect this vital resource face increasing pressures from new and unforeseen threats?  

Industry and private landowner stakeholder groups across a wide spectrum of interests have recognized the potential threat that these factors pose to forests. In 2019, the University of Florida hosted a collaborative workshop focused on the forest health issue and leaders from the forest industry and landowner groups identified key needs for the research and outreach communities (Fox et al. 2019): 

“Improved monitoring efforts to quickly detect and identify both native and exotic insects and diseases and evaluate their risk. This should include improved biosecurity efforts at ports of entry to prevent the introduction of invasive species that threaten US forests. 

Development of the practical tools needed to improve forest-management practices, so that landowners and managers can respond swiftly to threats from insects and diseases as they occur. 

Tree-improvement efforts that use both traditional tree breeding and modern biotechnology to identify mechanisms of susceptibility/resistance and develop trees better adapted to resist insects and diseases, while at the same time advancing understanding of the impacts of these tree improvements from an ecological perspective. 

Education and community outreach efforts to inform land managers and the general public about the risks to forests from insects and diseases and provide them with the knowledge and tools needed to create more-resilient, healthier forests that better mitigate the risks faced”    

Need for a multistate effort 

Addressing these needs for improved forest health and resilience as identified by our stakeholders requires efforts that are larger in scale than what can be addressed by small, geographically- or disciplinarily isolated teams of investigators or institutions (Brawner et al. 2019). Since pests and climatic threats interact and spillover across political boundaries, coordinated multistate communication and collaborative research can better prepare the nation to cope with emerging threats to forest health and resilience.