The National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry (NCSSF) was established to improve the scientific basis for the design, conduct and evaluation of sustainable forest practices in the United States. The NCSSF will award approximately $1.5 million in competitive research grants each year. It is committed to the development of a research program of the highest technical quality that is directly useful to forest managers, practitioners and policymakers. The program is designed and guided by managers, policy makers and scientists working together as members of the Commission, and funded by leading private foundations. The initial phases of the program will focus on the relationships between biodiversity and forest management practices (Criteria 1 of the Montreal process). The NCSSF emphasis is on developing the knowledge and tools most directly relevant to improving sustainable forestry practices on the ground over the next five years. This first year of the program (2002) emphasizes synthesizing existing information and assessing the state of knowledge for scientists and practitioners.

Synthesis projects initiated in 2002 included work on the relationship between forest management practices and the spread of forest diseases and exotic invasive weeds, science connecting forest biodiversity and complexity to hydrologic processes and aquatic ecosystems, and lessons learned about managing forests for biodiversity and sustainability based on practical experiences.

Research and Assessment projects included assessments of knowledge about non-timber forest products management impacts on biodiversity, assessments of the scientific basis for standards/practices at the stand, management unit and landscape levels, evaluation of the role of ecosystem restoration on biodiversity, and identification of the research needs related to forest fragmentation.

The NCSSF supported new initiatives focused on tool development to identify core biodiversity indicators to apply to sustainable forestry, an evaluation of indicators of ecosystem function that are applicable to forest management, and an evaluation of needs and requirements for decision support systems.

In this presentation we describe progress to date on these research initiatives and discuss future directions for NCSSF programs.