LANDFIRE and MTBS: Potential for Large-Scale Forest Monitoring

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Strategic Plan 2007-2012 calls for increased monitoring of forest lands and conditions as an important action to accomplish the agency’s long-term goals. Two national projects that the USFS is conducting in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Nature Conservancy illustrate how advances in remote sensing research could be used for national operational forest monitoring. The Landscape Fire Planning and Management Tools (LANDFIRE) is producing a set of ecosystem-relevant data products, including potential and existing vegetation, succession classes, surface and canopy fuel models, and fire regime conditions, and is also making research progress in developing repeatable methods for updating baseline data by capturing detectable disturbances such as forest cuts, invasive species, and forest defoliation and dieback as the result of insect and diseases. The Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) uses annual acquisitions of Landsat data to estimate combined effects of wildland fires on soil and surface materials as well as layers of forest structure. The two national-scope projects demonstrate the potential for an integrated national ecosystem disturbance monitoring framework. In this presentation, I will describe methods and results from the two projects, and discuss ideas and outline research needs for operational ecosystem disturbance monitoring.