When hurricanes careen through Florida, they not only damage homes and businesses, they also destroy forests and timber farms. Getting an accurate assessment for how much timber is damaged by hurricanes is essential for environmental management decisions, salvaging logging operations, tree farms’ insurance estimates and climate change studies, but so far measuring forest damage has been a vexing puzzle.
This story first appeared on University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences website. Guest author Meredith Bauer.
Through USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Rapid Response to Extreme Weather Events Across Food and Agricultural Systems program, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) researchers are using state-of-the-art monitoring equipment that will help them determine how extensively forests are damaged during individual hurricanes.
Carlos Silva, assistant professor of quantitative forest science in the UF/IFAS School of Forest, Fisheries and Geomatics Sciences and director of the forest biometrics, remote sensing and AI lab, said the key is to use a combination of remote sensing and artificial intelligence technologies, to create pre- and post-hurricane 3D maps of forests to evaluate forest loss. He uses satellites and lidar – a technology that uses lasers to collect data and which stands for Light Detection and Ranging – ground equipment to achieve this.
“Hurricanes pose a fundamental challenge for us in Florida,” Silva said. “The traditional way to assess the impact of hurricanes is basically going to the field, establishing plots and measuring trees. But if we’re thinking about large areas, it’s really time-consuming, therefore the traditional way of assessing impact of hurricanes on forest ecosystems is not efficient.”
“We are in a new era for monitoring forests, thanks to these innovative remote-sensing and AI methods,” he said.
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