ACORN (A CoOperative Resource Network) is an interactive website designed for landowners and others interested in forests in the Westfield and Deerfield River Watersheds in Western Massachusetts.

This site is focused on providing information about your land, your landscape and the community of western Massachusetts. The aim is to engage you as a landowner, add to your knowledge of your land and its natural surroundings and to foster communication among landowners.

Our forests are critical to our future. These trees, which we so often take for granted, provide us as individuals with a place to play, a quite retreat from our busy lives, and a potential source of revenue. As a society, our forests provide us with a natural filter to clean our drinking water at a low cost; they mitigate the effects of global warming through carbon sequestration, while improving our air quality; they maintain our natural heritage of nearly 2,000 species (not including invertebrates); and they provide us with wood products with which to build, furnish, and warm our homes.

Western Massachusetts is 79% forested, and 75% of that landbase is privately owned by families and individuals. It is the collective decisions of these landowners that will shape the future of this region.

It is MassACORN's aim to:

• Provide private forest owners with information about their land, their surrounding landscape, and community
• Encourage private forest owners, who do not currently participate in traditional forestry programs, to engage with their property
  
• Connect landowners to the larger conservation network
• Foster information sharing among private forest owners
• Aid private forest owners in making informed decisions about their woods.

Ecosystem functions will come under increased pressure as the population continues to rise and landscape fragmentation increases. It is private landowners, who currently hold much of the land base, that are the key to maintaining/preserving these critical ecosystem functions. We hope new outreach methods such as ACORN, which provide an integrated source of information at a local, relevant level and which are available in sync with our modern time schedule, will foster new awareness and will result in enhanced stewardship at the ecosystem level, while increasing overall public benefit.