Remote Assessment of Forest Ecosystem Stress (RAFES): Development of a real time decision support system for the Eastern U.S

Background/Question/Methods Drier and warmer conditions predicted with climate change models are likely to significantly impact forest ecosystems over the next several decades.  The southern U.S. has experienced significant droughts over the past several years that have increased the susceptibility of southern forests to insect outbreaks, disease, and wildfire.  Weather data collected with traditional approaches provide an indirect measure of drought or temperature stress; however, the significance of short-term or prolonged climate-related stress varies considerably across the landscape as topography, elevations, edaphic condition and antecedent conditions vary.  This limits the capacity of land managers to anticipate and initiate management activities that could offset the impacts of climate-related forest stress.  Decision support tools are needed that allow fine scale monitoring of stress conditions in forest ecosystems in real time and help land managers evaluate response strategies.  To assist land managers in managing the impacts of climate change, we are developing a stress monitoring and decision support system across multiple sites in the eastern U.S. that (1) provides remote data capture of environmental parameters that quantify climate-related forest stress across the network of sites, and, (2) links remotely captured data with physiologically-based indices of tree water stress, and  (3) provides a PC-based analytical tool that allows land managers to monitor and assess the severity of climate-related stress. 
Results/Conclusions

The sensor arrays at each site detect water and temperature stress variables and transmit those data to a field office. Sensors include air and soil temperature, relative humidity, fuel moisture and temperature, xylem sap flux density, soil moisture and matric potential, precipitation, and photosynthetically active radiation.  Data are transmitted in real-time to the NOAA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES).  Stem and root xylem vulnerability curves provide species-specific thresholds for water stress impacts on tree mortality.  A PC-based software program that downloads monitoring data from the GOES satellite, analyzes the data, and provides the land manager with an assessment of climate-related stress conditions and potential forest health threat levels in real time is under development.