Research Across Clemson
One Forest. Forty-Four Research Projects. Five Colleges.
The Clemson University Forest is becoming something larger than a place where individual research projects happen. It is becoming a platform that connects researchers, preserves long-term data and creates opportunities for collaboration across disciplines.
The 2025-26 research survey identified 44 current and ongoing projects with an estimated value of approximately $4 million, representing five Clemson colleges. Together, those projects touch questions ranging from wildlife and invasive species to recreation, ecosystem change, forest management and the long-term dynamics of the landscape.
The growing research portfolio also helps explain what makes the Forest unusual. The same landscape can be a field site for wildlife ecology, a long-term forest inventory, a classroom for recreation research and a test bed for questions about climate, carbon and ecosystem change. By understanding what researchers are doing across the Forest, staff can help researchers find each other, share information and build on work that is already underway.
The Forest Data Hub: Making decades of information easier to use
This year, that collaborative research infrastructure gained a powerful new tool. Clemson University Forest staff worked with Bart Swecker, data scientist for Clemson’s Office of Institutional Effectiveness, to build and deploy the Clemson University Forest Data Hub.
The goal is straightforward: make shared Forest data easier for researchers and managers to find and use. Instead of searching across disparate files and storage systems, users can access shared information, including data from historical research efforts, through a common platform. The result is a stronger foundation for research that can build on what came before.
Sixty years of data. A changing forest.
One of the Forest’s greatest research assets is also one of its longest-running commitments: the Continuous Forest Inventory, which has been collected since 1961. This year, MS student Cole Myers completed an update of that inventory with a team that included Clemson University Forest staff.
The team revisited historic plots across the existing 2,000-foot grid and added new fixed plots. They also updated the field process using an automated data-collection system linked with the Forest Data Hub. That combination of long-term observation and modern data collection creates a powerful resource for researchers and managers who need to understand how a forest changes over time.
Research topics have diversified through time, from an early emphasis on silviculture to a broader mix of forestry, wildlife, social and environmental research.
397 published works — and a changing research agenda
Rob Baldwin, Forest Executive Director, also completed an analysis of research productivity and topics across the Forest’s past 60 years. Using an in-house bibliography together with new literature searches, he identified 397 published works generated from the Forest.
The story told by those publications is one of diversification. Silviculture dominated the early decades. Over time, research expanded to include forestry, wildlife, social and environmental topics. The result is a record of a landscape that has grown along with the questions scientists are asking about forests and their relationship to people.
Research profiles
Charlie Brill: Counting wild hogs
Wild hogs are a management challenge with consequences for ecosystems and agricultural interests. Doctoral student Charlie Brill completed field work to estimate wild hog population density on the Clemson University Forest. He deployed 91 camera traps and analyzed 1,520 lines of data, producing an estimate that can help the Forest work with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources on future management.
The project is also a reminder of how local research can intersect with larger animal-health concerns. The emergence of New World screwworm in wild hog populations elsewhere has heightened attention to the role wild hogs can play in disease and wildlife-management conversations.
Lydia Heisel: Understanding the people who care for the Forest
A healthy Forest depends on people as much as trees and trails. Lydia Heisel's master's research in Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management examined the motivations of Clemson University Forest volunteers. Her work identified five distinct volunteer motivational profiles, which can help the Forest's Recreation Specialist build more productive relationships with this important community.
Meycel Amarille: Putting a value on recreation
Doctoral student Meycel Amarille is examining the recreational value of the Clemson University Forest using the Travel Cost Method. Her research also looks at the factors that influence visitor loyalty and focuses on the cultural ecosystem services provided by the Forest. One goal is to expand the findings to state parks across South Carolina.
For nearly 100 years, Clemson University Forest has been a symbol of resilience and recovery. Beginning in the 1930s as a mixed landscape of marginal farmland and patches of trees, it became the lush forest we enjoy today. Through decades of economic ups and downs, wars and social change, the Forest has endured.
