Opportunities for Integrating New Technology

Steve PrisleyVirginia Tech Department of Forest Resources &

Environmental Conservation

2010 National FIA User Group Meeting

Or not…

Recent FIA-related research

• Modeling pinyon-juniper in Nevada (Chojnacky)

• Ginseng production & timber harvest (Chamberlain)

• Forest productivity in southern Appalachians (Radtke & Fox; Loftis & McNab)

• Productivity-diversity relationships (Belote)

P-J Forest Carbon

Ginseng Production

Forest Productivity

Productivity-Diversity

relationships

Opportunities

• To apply technology to faster, cheaper, more accurate collection of forest inventory data

• To utilize technological advances for more efficient estimation and analysis

• To leverage technology to enhance the creation and dissemination of inventory results to a wide array of audiences

What more could be done?

Opportunities

• Ummm…• Errrr…..• Well, ….

Lesson: you don’t look for a techno-visionary in someone who bought Garmin stock at $90 (now $34.45) and sold Apple at $120 (now $197.38)

Visioning

• Is a good thing: look how far we’ve come:– The map is all green (or blue!)!!– We’re measuring turnaround in data in months-

not years!– FIADB is at version 4.0!– There’s a national field procedures manual!– Prisley is not whining about plot coordinates!

Experimenting with Technology

• RFID tags on trees, with plot transponder to send status upon interrogation; capture disturbance in near real-time

• Spatial overlay with Doppler radar images to model growth using measured/modeled precipitation

• Obtain ownership dynamics at P1 level with spatial overlay of parcel ownership data

Let’s not heed the siren’s call…• Stay the course• Maintain focus on the core• Turnaround the data• Etc…

What we really need:

Isolate the Janitor gene

What we really need:

Capture institutional knowledge before it’s gone

Data

Data

What we really need:

Prepare the next generation of FIA analysts

Bolivian topwood

D-tape challenge