21st century computing for 21st century forest management

Abstract

The USDA Forest Service uses many forms of technology to manage 193 million acres that comprise the National Forest System: handheld data-entry devices and satellites; modeling software and LiDAR (light detection and ranging) remote sensing; and desktop computers and servers. Collectively, these technologies power the models that create the maps land managers use to monitor and understand landscape changes. Adopting cloud-computing platforms, such as Google Earth Engine (GEE), offers potential to advance these monitoring efforts even further.Researchers with the USDA Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain Research Stations and Google collaborated to customize GEE’s cloudcomputing capabilities. Their goal: develop a way to store and process the vast amounts of the remote-sensing data needed for the Gradient Nearest Neighbor (GNN) model that produces forest attribute maps.The research team used the new process to create forest attribute maps for the recently published report, Northwest Forest Plan—The First 25 Years (1994–2018): Status and Trends of Late- Successional and Old-Growth Forests. The researchers found that using GEE substantially decreased the processing time required to create the maps. Additionally, two new online tools, the Landscape Change Monitoring System Data Explorer and the Gradient Nearest Neighbor Trend Tool, allow users to see the most recent model results within the Northwest Forest Plan area.

Citation

Watts, Andrea; Bell, David; Gregory, Matthew. 2022. 21st century computing for 21st century forest management. Science Findings 253. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 6p.