A Wetter, Hotter South is Changing the Economics of Forestry

A new framework examines the impact of future climate scenarios on employment in the forestry industry. The study provides projections for decision-makers that inform the future of the forest sector in the South.

The southern US is the largest producer of timber products in the world because of easy access to fast-growing southern yellow pine and multiple ports throughout the region. In 2016, forest-based employment, like logging, furniture and paper manufacturing, represented $27 billion in wages in the region. 

Forestry work is often outdoors and physically demanding, meaning that workers are vulnerable to current and future climatic conditions. So understanding how the future climate will impact both trees and employees is critical to maintaining this important economic driver for the rural economy.

“There are a lot of small, rural communities in the South dependent on the forest products industry to support their economic livelihoods,” says Austin Lamica, co-author and 2022-23 Global Change Research Fellow.

Lamica is part of the team that studies the impacts of current and future climate change on the industry. The team developed a framework that compares historical county-level employment trends with current and future climate scenarios to project forestry employment availability up to the year 2070.

Researchers found that hotter temperatures negatively affect productivity in manufacturing plants. This makes sense given the known association between heat and negative health consequences. Extreme heat negatively affects human health, with some impacts being increased exhaustion, deregulating body temperature, and heat stroke. This makes it more dangerous to work in warmer conditions. There has been a steady decline in the number of people working in forest-based employment, in part due to these increasingly dangerous outdoor conditions.

However, more rain means an increased ability to grow more trees, and faster, increasing the supply of timber. As the supply of timber increases, and more manufacturing plants are needed to process the timber, there may be an incentive for these industries to implement production strategies that adapt to the changing climate, such as better heat management within manufacturing plants.

“Forestry is one of those unique industries that is integrated with everything. You look at things in your house, be it a table or quite literally your house, that came from forest-based employment,” says Lamica. “Someone managing a forest, someone cutting down that log, someone processing that log. Forestry jobs affect our lives in more ways than I think people realize, because wood is everywhere.” 

Future research could apply this framework to different regions throughout the country, as they face varying climate challenges. They could also explore the impact of climate variables on the number of days worked per year. There’s also an opportunity to incorporate the impact of new technologies, like automated manufacturing tools, into the framework for a more nuanced understanding of the future of the forest industry.

The paper, “Forest-Based Employment in the Southern United States Under Climate Change: Historical Impacts and Future Projections,” was published in Forest Science in February, 2025. The paper was co-authored by Rajan Parajuli from NC State University and Christopher Mihiar from the USDA Forest Service.