SUMMARY: I am a member of the Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Research Team in the Southern Research Station of the USDA Forest Service. The team develops forest inventory and monitoring protocols and analytical tools, analyzes forest conditions and trends, assesses the health and sustainability of the Nation’s forests, and prepares reports summarizing forest conditions and trends. This includes the development of indicators which can be used to monitor and assess forest and landscape patterns over space and time. The team’s work is regional to global in scope and addresses technical aspects of the design of large-scale forest inventory and monitoring systems and the analysis and interpretation of data from those systems. The team also identifies other sources of environmental data and develops methods to synthesize these diverse data streams to perform integrated analyses of forest conditions. The team’s products regularly appear in national assessment documents, several of which are published by the Office of the Chief to fulfill Forest Service requirements in forest assessment and policy arenas. Additionally, the team collaborates extensively on research with other Forest Service regions and units, federal agencies, universities, state agencies, and international entities.

LINKS:

• Forest Health Monitoring Annual National Reports