Future projections of U.S. forest succession classes on federal lands

Name: Future projections of U.S. forest succession classes on federal lands
Published: 2026-05-31
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) US Department of Agriculture; US Forest Service

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
RDS-2025-0039.zip	application/zip	9.3 MB	05/30/2026 12:46:PM
RDS-2025-0039_Metadata_Fileindex.zip	application/zip	17.3 KB	05/30/2026 12:46:PM
catalog_detail.pdf	application/pdf	109.9 KB	05/30/2026 08:37:PM
file_index.pdf	application/pdf	63.2 KB	05/30/2026 12:46:PM
metadata.pdf	application/pdf	166.7 KB	05/30/2026 12:46:PM

Project Citation:

US Department of Agriculture, and US Forest Service. Future projections of U.S. forest succession classes on federal lands. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2026-05-31. https://doi.org/10.3886/E248743V1

Project Description

Project Title: Future projections of U.S. forest succession classes on federal lands

Summary: Changing climate conditions, wildfires, and tree harvesting could affect the amount of mature and old-growth forests in the United States. We used a stochastic modeling system to project future areal extents of mature and old-growth forests on National Forest System (NFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land across the conterminous United States, and to assess threats to these forests under a variety of socioeconomic and climate futures. The data included in this package contain estimates and projections, from 2020 to 2070, of forest area and volume by forest successional class (old growth, mature, and younger) for 20 futures, which are combinations of four socioeconomic scenarios and five global climate models. Estimates of area, tree volume, fire mortality, and harvest removals are provided for each Resources Planning Act (RPA) region. Additionally, estimates of current and future area of mature and old-growth by Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) forest type group are included. For each of the 20 futures in the regional and forest type group summaries, 100 future realizations from the stochastic modeling system are included, allowing for the quantification of uncertainty. Finally, data on initial sampling errors by forest successional class and forest type group are included. It is important to note that estimates by forest type group only include the twelve largest forest type groups (by area in 2020).

Original Distribution URL: https://www.fs.usda.gov/rds/archive/catalog/RDS-2025-0039

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: biota; climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere; economy; environment; Climate change; Ecology; Ecosystems; Environment; Environment and People; Fire; Forest & Plant Health; Inventory; Monitoring; Analysis; Natural Resource Management & Use; mature forest; old-growth forest; Resources Planning Act Assessment; RPA Assessment; Forest Inventory and Analysis; conterminous United States

Geographic Coverage: United States

Time Period(s): 2020 – 2070

Data Type(s): program source code

Collection Notes: DOI: https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2025-0039 Authors: Walker, David M. ; Costanza, Jennifer K. ; Potter, Kevin M. ; Koch, Frank H. ; Gray, Andrew N. ; Coulston, John W. Publication year: 2025 (Downloaded 2026-05-30)

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