Putting Forest Inventory and Analysis data to work in forest planning and monitoring

Every year the Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program collects field data across all forests of the United States, providing a constantly updating inventory of our country’s forests and their conditions regardless of ownership. The inventory includes information about traditional forest resources (such as wood volume and biomass), but also woody fuels, understory vegetation, and wildlife habitat. It can therefore be used for forest planning and monitoring for a wide variety of traditionally separate resource areas, including forest products; fire, rangeland, and wildlife management; and terrestrial ecology. Using this same data set to plan for and manage all types of natural resources in an area and across and ownership boundaries can improve internal coordination in land management agencies and with outside partners. This webinar will provide an overview of this dataset and examples of how National Forests are using it for forest-scale planning and monitoring.

This webinar is part of our Science You Can Use series of land-management focused webinars. The sessions are half presentation, half discussion and Q&A.