Healthy Forest

Project Overview:

The Healthy Forest Initiative is a collaborative project between NASA, U.S. Forest Service, and ITD to reduce the likelihood of forest disturbances, mitigate the effects of disturbances, improve information access through centralization, and improve tracking of forest risk and disturbance over space and time. ITD is working with the Western Wildland Environmental Threat Center (Prineville, OR) and the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center (Asheville, NC) to develop an integrated national Early Warning System (EWS) to identify, detect, and rapidly respond to forest environmental threats.

Current Project Activities:

Western Wildland Environmental Threat Center:

  •   Component Title: Detection, Mapping, and Monitoring of Sudden Oak Death Using Hyperspectral Imagery
  •   Early Warning System Components Addressed: Infectious Plant Diseases
  •   Study Location: Humboldt County, CA and Curry County, OR
  •   Significance: Has killed hundreds of thousands of oak and tanoak trees in Coastal California and Oregon. The pathogen poses a significant risk to hardwood industry throughout the U.S.


    • Figure 1. Sudden oak death in California

    Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center:

  •   Component Title: Identification and Mapping of Invasive Species in the Daniel Boone National Forest Using Hyperspectral Imagery

  •   Early Warning System Components Addressed: Non-native Invasive Species

  •   Study Location: Daniel Boone National Forest in Eastern Kentucky

  •   Significance: Non-native invasive species have infested over 100 million acres in the U.S. and cost the Nation’s economy $123 billion every year.


    • Figure 2. Invasive species in the Daniel Boone National Forest

    For more information of this or any other current research, contact us.