As Director of the USDA Northeast Climate Hub, I am pleased to announce new partnerships with 12 land grant universities. This partnership effort will give the region’s farmers, foresters, and land managers better access to information and tools for adapting to climate and weather variability.
The Northeast Climate Hub is one of seven hubs around the country formed to address increasing climate and weather related risks to agriculture such as devastating floods, crippling droughts, extreme storms, fires, and invasive pests.
The purpose of the agreements is to create a network for information sharing and exchange. Universities will be active partners in developing, implementing, and evaluating decision support materials for producers that describe how to best cope with and even take advantage of increasing variability in weather. Universities with which the Northeast Climate Hub has entered into agreements are: University of Maine, University of New Hampshire, University of Vermont, University of Rhode Island, Cornell University, Rutgers University, West Virginia University, University of Delaware, University of Maryland, Pennsylvania State University, University of Massachusetts and the University of Connecticut.
The Climate Hub will fund university projects geared toward solutions and adaptation tools that are applicable to farming and forestry practices at regional and local scales. Our ultimate purpose is to provide science-based, region-specific information and technologies that enable climate-smart decision-making. The land grant universities have a long and successful history of delivering science in forms that people can use.”
Hosted by the USDA Forest Service’s Northern Research Station, the Northeast Climate Hub, based in New Hampshire, is a partnership among the Forest Service, Agricultural Research Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and other federal, state and private organizations within the northeast region. The Northeast Climate Hub stretches from Maine to West Virginia and includes the Northern Forest Sub-Hub focused on forestry. USDA regional Hubs are also located in the Southeast, Midwest, Southern Plains, Northern Plains, Southwest and Pacific Northwest.