Forest Response Research in NAPAP: Potentially Successful Linkage of Policy and Science.

The Forest Response Program (FRP), a major component of the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP), was established only after NAPAP had been underway for five years. Thus, it benefitted from a more sophisticated understanding of the essential policy questions that the research on forests would be required to answer, in comparison to the earlier aquatic studies. The "gradient studies" of the Eastern Hardwoods Research Cooperative were planned as 5-yr projects to determine whether there was any epidemiological pattern in forest responses corresponding to measures of pollutant dose (acidic deposition or oxidants). The NAPAP "Assessment" was written after only 3 yr of the research, and its findings differ in important ways from the 5-yr findings of the gradient studies. The FRP had the potential to be a model study of how applied research can be designed to solve major resource policy questions, but it is perceived to have failed for reasons of multiple non-congruences between planning and reporting. Potential still exists for a positive outcome. © 1992 by the Ecological Society of America.