Spruce-fir forests in the Northeast face a number of stressors including but not limited to warming temperatures and impacts from spruce budworm outbreaks. At the 2024 FEMC Joint Committee Meeting, health trends of spruce-fir forests, including the responses of these forests to spruce budworm outbreaks, was a top concern among FEMC collaborators. Collaborators also identified the existence of several underutilized datasets on spruce-fir forest health in the region.

In 2025 FEMC is working to identify and aggregate a variety of datasets (e.g., inventory, monitoring, tree core data) from red spruce and balsam fir forests from across the region and develop a web portal for data discovery and access. We will facilitate the work of an expert panel to identify key research questions related to spruce-fir forest health, identify how the data collected can be used to address those questions, and develop a proposal for a collaborative synthesis project to be completed in future years.

Outputs this year will include:

1. Data web with descriptions of and links to relevant available data
2. Coordination of a spruce-fir expert panel
3. Workshop summary describing key questions related to spruce-fir forest health and opportunities to leverage existing data
4. Collaborative synthesis proposal for future work