William W. Hargrove, Joseph P. Spruce, Steven P. Norman, Forrest M. Hoffman
The National Early Warning System (EWS) provides an 8-day coast-to-coast snapshot of potentially disturbed forests across the U.S. The EWS has produced national maps of potential forest disturbances every eight days since January 2010, identifying locations that may require further investigation. Through phenology, the system detects all types of unexpected forest disturbances, including insects, disease, wildfires, frost and ice damage, tornadoes, hurricanes, blowdowns, harvest, urbanization, landslides, drought, flood, and climate change.
The EWS uses differences in phenological responses between an expectation based on historical data and a current view to strategically identify potential forest disturbances and direct attention to locations where forest behavior seems unusual. Disturbance maps are available via the Forest Change Assessment Viewer (FCAV) (http://ews.forestthreats.org/gis), which allows resource managers and other users to see the most current national disturbance maps as soon as they are available.
Unsupervised statistical multivariate clustering of smoothed phenology data every 8 days over an 11-year period produces a detailed map of national vegetation types, including major disturbances. Using spectral unmixing methods, national maps of evergreen decline can be produced which are a composite of insect, disease, and anthropogenic factors causing chronic decline in these forests, including hemlock wooly adelgid, mountain pine beetle, wildfire, tree harvest, and urbanization.