2011 Research Highlights
“Eye in the Sky” Monitors Forests from Coast to Coast
Early Warning System provides a weekly snapshot of US forest conditions to aid forest managers
To help forest and natural resource managers rapidly detect, identify, and respond to unexpected changes in the nation’s forests, EFETAC scientists are collaborating to develop the National Early Warning System (EWS), a web-based forest monitoring tool that uses satellite imagery to generate national maps of vegetation conditions across the lower 48 United States every 8 days. The EWS compares current greenness with the “normal” greenness that would be expected for healthy vegetation for a specific location and day of the year. The EWS identifies areas appearing less green than expected to provide a strategic national overview of potential forest disturbances that can focus and direct ground and aircraft observation efforts and resources. In addition to forests, the EWS tracks potential disturbances in rangeland vegetation and agricultural crops.
The EWS is the first national-scale system of its kind based on remote sensing and developed for forest disturbances. It has operated as a prototype since January 2010 and has provided useful information about the location and extent of disturbances detected during the 2011 growing season, including tornadoes, wildfires, and extreme drought. The EWS was used to map tornado scars from the historic April 27, 2011 tornado outbreak, and detected timber damage within more than a dozen tornado tracks across northern Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. EWS tools are undergoing an initial testing phase to further develop and refine products and system utility. Disturbance maps are available through the EWS Forest Change Assessment Viewer at http://ews.forestthreats.org/gis.
Contact: William W. Hargrove, research ecologist, (828) 257-4846, william.w.hargrove@usda.gov
