ABSTRACT
Forest dynamics in the United States differ substantially from those in the developing world and thus present unique monitoring requirements. The United States relies on its national forest inventory for domestic and international reporting of forest change. The ideal change monitoring system would provide up-to-date and consistent information about the location, magnitude, and nature of vegetation changes on all land cover types across the country. This chapter describes the research- and agency-based monitoring efforts which address different aspects of this ideal system, and several steps are being taken under LCMS to promote both integration of existing products and cooperation on the development of new products. Landsat imagery has also been proposed as a way to spatially interpolate LIDAR “samples” across the landscape using krigging techniques as well as a way to group LIDAR measurements based upon patterns of forest structure and disturbance.
