Remote Sensing of Large Watershed Change for ecosystem management

Improved Information and Approaches for Sustainable Integrated Fisheries Management: This project uses satellite imagery to produce low-cost, continuous time series of a suite of high-level indicators of vegetation density and condition that reflect watershed and ecosystem health.  Analysis of the 22-year satellite archive with respect to fisheries statistics will help to identify specific watershed parameters important to growth and survival of individual fish stocks, and maintenance of the time series into the future can be used to then apply the findings to ongoing management.

Education and Community Engagement: Maps of watershed ‘greenness’ and changes in greenness are visually engaging and immediately understandable by most people.  Beyond applications to fisheries, the immediate effects of and recovery from events such as fire, insect damage and logging can be mapped and tracked over time.