Article Highlight: All about Nontimber Forest Products
December 16, 2020
The December 2020 issue of
The Forestry Source is a special edition focused on nontimber forest products.
Enjoy the below excerpt from this month’s issue about professionals who work in this important sector of the forestry and natural resources profession. To read the full article, start reading on page 10.
All about Nontimber Forest Products
By Steve Wilent
If you want to learn about nontimber forest products (NTFPs) in the US, there is no better source of information than James L. Chamberlain, a research forest products technologist at the US Forest Service’s Southern Research Station. He also is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials at Virginia Tech.
The roots of black cohosh (Actaea racemosa), a plant native to the eastern US,
are widely used as a dietary supplement. Photo: Karan A. Rawlins, University
of Georgia, Bugwood.org.
As this article explains, Chamberlain’s main focus is conducting research into expanding the scope of the agency’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program to assess the status and trends of the nation’s non-timber forest resources and developing new techniques to incorporate NTFPs into all elements of the FIA program.