About

The East Mississippi Sentinel Landscape (EMSL) encompasses 6.5 million acres across east-central Mississippi, representing nearly 22 percent of the state's land area. The landscape is anchored by Naval Air Station Meridian (NASMER) and supported Columbus Air Force Base (CAFB), two nationally significant pilot training installations that rely on the region's extensive rural geography, Military Operations Areas (MOAs), and Military Training Routes (MTRs) to train Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and allied aviators. More than 91 percent of the landscape is privately owned, making partnerships with landowners, the forestry industry, agricultural producers, and conservation organizations essential to sustaining both military readiness and Mississippi's rural economy.

Population growth, incompatible development, infrastructure expansion, working lands conversion, declining forest markets, invasive species, altered fire regimes, and increasing demands on water and energy infrastructure threaten the landscape’s long-term military mission compatibility. These pressures reduce the availability of open space needed for low-level tactical flight training while degrading forests, watersheds, wildlife habitat, and other natural resources that support resilient working lands. The EMSL unites Federal, state, local, nonprofit, academic, industry, and private landowner partners to address these shared challenges through voluntary conservation, sustainable forestry and agriculture, prescribed fire, habitat restoration, watershed protection, and compatible land-use planning.

The landscape includes nationally significant longleaf pine ecosystems, Black Prairie grasslands, bottomland hardwood forests, the Tombigbee, Buttahatchee, Upper Pearl, and Chickasawhay watersheds, and habitat supporting numerous threatened and endangered species. By coordinating conservation investments across these working landscapes, the EMSL protects natural resources, strengthens rural communities, and sustains the nationally critical pilot training missions at NASMER and CAFB.