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The Southern Forest Futures Project (SFFP) started in 2008 as an effort to study and understand the various forces reshaping the forests across the 13 states of the South over the next 50 years. Chartered by the U.S. Forest Service Southern Region and Southern Research Station (SRS) along with the Southern Group of State Foresters, the project examined a variety of possible futures and how they might affect forests and their many ecosystems and values.

Because of the great variations in forest ecosystems across the South, the Futures Project produced separate findings and implications by subregion, including the newly published report for the Mid-South, the westernmost of the five subregions located within Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. The report breaks the Mid-South into four sections: the Ozark-Ouachita Highlands, the Cross Timbers, the High Plains, and the West Texas Basin and Range.

“The four sections of the Mid-South region offer vistas of unparalleled ecological variety, species diversity, and scenic beauty,” says Jim Guldin, lead author of the report and project leader of the SRS Restoring Longleaf Pine Ecosystems and Southern Pine Ecology and Management research units. “It’s a huge area where the landscape varies from the mountains of northern Arkansas to windswept high plains prairies to West Texas deserts. The Mid-South supports more — and more varied — ecosystems than anywhere else in the South.”

Over the next 50 years, the Mid-South will face challenges that include population increases, the likelihood of increased drought coupled with increased demand for water and water supply stress, sea level rise along the Gulf of Mexico, and invasive native species. Report chapters provide background and address issues for each of the four sections of the Mid-South.

From the USFS Southern Research Station: https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/compass/2015/04/23/outlook-for-mid-south-forests-the-next-50-years/