A new countrywide forest monitoring system combines remote sensing imagery, climate, soil and weather data in a high-performance computing environment to keep tabs on the health of U.S. forests. The system looks at all the factors that increase the threat to forests from such things as insects, disease and wildfire, and works to profile each threat in order to predict future problem locations.
The system is called Forest Incidence Recognition and State Tracking (FIRST) and was developed in part by DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in a multi-agency project led by the USDA Forest Service. The system takes a proactive approach to forest management on a grand scale by helping direct remediation to areas of highest priority.
