Our response to disturbances such as wildfire, pests, wind or ice storms is often limited by knowing where the disturbance occurred. Existing disturbance tracking programs were not designed to track all forest or other vegetation types at high frequency, and this can contribute to delays in awareness, and if warranted, response. With its 8-day product frequency, ForWarn can recognize ephemeral biologically important disturbances that in some cases may go entirely unnoticed.


The systematic use of broad-scale remote sensing is different than past approaches to remote sensing that were designed to assess isolated disturbance events. For example, when and where large wildfires occur, burn severity assessments help land managers decide where to stabilize soil and mitigate suppression activities. Similarly, when hail or tornadoes strike populated areas or croplands, emergency efforts map the area affected to efficiently channel resources where they are needed most. In contrast, ForWarn tracks the entire landscape, all the time. In this sense, continuous monitoring from remote sensing is akin to the plot-based Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program, although ForWarn is at 5.4 hectare resolution and updated weekly.

The advantages of viewing the forest change images locally are: (1) to overlay with your GIS layers, (2) to screen-digitize disturbance extent and severity, (3) the increased use and functionality of a desktop GIS