Williams, K., S.A. Sader, C. Pryor, and F. Reed. Application of geospatial technology to monitor forest legacy conservation easements. Journal of Forestry 103 (8) (in press).
ABSTRACT
Remote sensing and other geospatial tools are being applied to monitor large working forest conservation easements and to assist office and field users to improve the efficiency of required monitoring. Two USDA-Forest Legacy Program conservation easements in northern New England are included as case studies to describe how to acquire geospatial data and apply these tools to monitor selected easement features. Much of the remote sensing and GIS data are free or low cost and functional software capable of viewing, querying and making measurements on images and maps can be acquired from public sources. A high resolution, digital image management system linked to satellite imagery and the GIS database is presented. Finally, the geospatial monitoring tools on a hand-held personal data assistant device for field users are demonstrated.