GENETIC DIVERSITY IN COMMERCIAL FOREST TREE PLANTATIONS - INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS TO THE 1994 SRIEG MEETING PAPERS

The SRIEG (Southern Regional Information Exchange Group) 1994 program organizers (George Askew, Tom Blush, and Barbara McCutchan) invited 18 authors to survey attitudes, data, methodology, plans, regulations, a nd strategies with respect to genetic diversity in forest stands. Thes e presentations, made during a 2-day meeting on 19-20 July at Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina, focused particularly on commercia l plantations, where a single planted species may serve as the primary keystone species in the ecosystem that develops. We present here (1) a brief guide to these 10 presentations, 6 of which are printed in thi s issue, plus brief descriptions of two companion meetings, one of whi ch is printed in this issue (H.E. Stelzer and B. Goldfarb. 1997. Imple menting clonal forestry in the southeastern United States: SRIEG satel lite workshop summary remarks. Can. J. For. Res. 27: 442-446); (2) som e topics developed during formal panel and audience discussions, and d uring informal discussions during breaks, that are not fully addressed in the following papers; and (3) some genetic conservation - diversit y issues that seem to need continued or additional attention. (With re spect to items 2 and 3 above, while these were part of our charge, we could not participate in all conversations and discussions that occurr ed informally, nor do we claim to have fully comprehended those we do report. We did present these at the final session of the meeting, thus giving other participants the opportunity to disagree and add things we missed, and some revisions and additions thus occurred. It was many of these informal conversations and discussions that developed additi onal insights and made the meeting a more effective format for this to pic than just publishing independently submitted papers. in spite of o ur admittedly imperfect reporting, we are pleased to include them, and suggest that some will prove to be valuable.)