WVU Forest Economist, Bridgeport Resident, Finds Purpose in Studying Land Management Around World
By Connect-Bridgeport Staff on March 23, 2025
Well before Kathryn Gazal came to the United States, she was interested in forest economics in the Philippines, where she grew up as the daughter of an environmental forester. The West Virginia University associate professor of forest resources management now focuses on the economic contributions of the forest products industry.
Gazal, a Bridgeport resident, and several of her colleagues from both the WVU Davis College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences recently received a $1.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study forest-based climate solutions, and she 
has been focusing on private landowners in West Virginia and their participation in these kinds of programs.
has been focusing on private landowners in West Virginia and their participation in these kinds of programs.
Gazal noticed the differences between land ownership in the Philippines and the U.S. when she obtained her doctoral degree at Mississippi State.
“There are lot of landowners here in the United States, unlike in the Philippines, where lands are mostly public,” she said. “That really caught my eye, because the management style and policies are different between public and private ownership. I got interested in studying landowner behavior. Here in the U.S., landowners are more active in managing their land.”
Gazal also found that Mississippi landowners manage their property differently from those in West Virginia.
“In Mississippi, there are a lot of pine plantations, so the owners are more active,” she said. “They treat their property like a farm, and they do a lot of intensive forestry practices. I’ve learned that West Virginia is different. A lot of landowners here are passive landowners. They’re not really managing their land for timber. Many people got their property from their parents and grandparents. They just have it for recreation and passing on to their kids in the future. It’s not the kind of intensive forestry practice I’ve observed in the South.”
Gazal is interested in what drives owners to manage their forests a certain way and how those factors affect West Virginia, where 80% of the land is privately owned by around 260,000 landowners.
“There’s unrealized potential,” she said. “If we can reach those small landowners, they’ll have a big impact on the state. If suddenly they all decide they don’t want to do anything with forestry, it’s going to hurt us. That’s why we have a lot of forestry, educational, tax incentive and financial assistance programs to encourage forest landowners to manage their property.”
Gazal is also focusing on how landowners can contribute to carbon capture efforts. While owners can play a big role in contributing to forest-based climate solutions, participation in these types of programs is often a challenge, so she and her students have made engagement a priority.
Many landowners are unaware of opportunities for forest-based climate solutions, including an initiative by the American Forest Foundation and the Nature Conservancy, which has introduced the Family Forest Carbon Program to help landowners manage their forests and address climate change. The program is gaining momentum, but West Virginia landowners have not taken advantage of these opportunities. Gazal and her students are working with WVU Extension to understand why and find ways to attract small family forest owners.
She said she’s learned information barriers are common, and landowners often believe timbering and carbon storage are mutually exclusive opportunities.
“They think, ‘If I do carbon, I can’t cut my trees,’” Gazal said. “We’re studying how we can create programs that are more acceptable. This is new in the state. Usually, small landowners have a hard time participating in carbon programs because they’re expensive, but now we have family forest programs that are more accessible.”
She would like to expand her focus on forest-based climate solutions to central Appalachia.
“There’s a lot of forest here,” she said. “It’s been affected by the coal industry. A lot of the rural communities here are economically distressed. Maybe there are opportunities aside from coal and timbering that we could explore to promote economic development in rural West Virginia. I love it here because we’re covered in forests and forestry has always been a big part of me. That’s why I went into this field.”
