Monitoring the health of forest ecosystems in the United States: Role of information management∗

Abstract

The Forest Resource group of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Monitoring and Assessment program is working closely with the U.S. Forest Service and other government agencies to establish a national Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) program. The FHM information management system is a key component contributing to the success of this program. Field data are collected using portable data recorders which permit on-site data verification and reduce field data collection errors by over 90 percent. A sample tracking system provides control of field samples from the time they are collected through laboratory analysis. Electronic communication between field crews and an FHM mainframe computer allows for near real time data validation as well as electronic mail communications. A national FHM data base containing data from the four FHM regions is designed to meet the needs of diverse groups of users from FHM program managers and scientists to researchers from other public agencies, universities, and private organizations.