Abstract
Estimates of forest canopy areal extent, configuration, and change have been developed from satellite-based imagery and ground-based inventories to improve understanding of forest dynamics and how they interact with other Earth systems across many scales. The number of these types of studies has grown in recent years, yet few have assessed the multiple change processes underlying observed forest canopy dynamics across large spatio-temporal extents. To support these types of assessments, a more detailed and integrated understanding of the geographic patterns of forest change processes across the contiguous United States (CONUS) is needed. This work uses forest age estimates from U.S. Forest Service ground inventory data and a novel data set from the North American Forest Dynamics project, which provides a dense temporal record (1984-2005) of forest canopy history across the United States, as well as ancillary geospatial data sets on forest change processes (wind, insect, fire, harvest, and conversion to suburban/urban land uses) across the CONUS. Forest area is estimated and causal processes of forest change are shown through time across multiple scales.
Parent Publication
Keywords
statistics,
estimation,
sampling,
modeling,
remote sensing,
forest health,
data integrity,
environmental monitoring,
cover estimation,
international forest monitoring
Citation
Schleeweis, Karen; Goward, Samuel N.; Huang, Chengquan; Masek, Jeffrey; Moisen, Gretchen G. 2012. Understanding trends in observations of forest disturbance and their underlying causal processes. In: Morin, Randall S.; Liknes, Greg C., comps. Moving from status to trends: Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) symposium 2012; 2012 December 4-6; Baltimore, MD. Gen. Tech. Rep. NRS-P-105. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station. [CD-ROM]: 131-136.
