WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana — The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded a $10 million grant to Purdue University to help landowners and stakeholders better adapt their forests to increasingly complicated economic and climate conditions in the Eastern U.S. About five million small, private landowners control just over half the acreage of forests in the Eastern U.S. …Purdue and its project partners—the University of Georgia, the University of Maine and the U.S. Forest Service—aim to improve the management of 15 million acres of those forests. The project encompasses the northern hardwood forest in the Northeast, the central hardwood region, and the southern pine and mixed hardwood. “We will provide the digital tools that allow rapid response and precision management to improve forest health,” said Songlin Fei, a professor of forestry.