Abstract
The Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) national program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service determines status, changes, and trends in indicators of forest condition across all forested lands (ch. 1). One of the central objectives of the FHM annual national reports is to present forest health indicator information from a national perspective, or from a multi-State regional perspective when appropriate, using data collected by the Forest Health Protection (FHP) and Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) programs of the Forest Service, as well as from other sources. A standing chapter in each edition of the annual “Forest Health Monitoring: National Status, Trends, and Analysis” report, for example, quantifies forest area affected by insects and disease on a yearly basis using data from the FHP national Insect and Disease Survey (IDS) (FHP 2016, 2019) (ch. 2). This is particularly important because forest insects and diseases, particularly nonnative invasive agents, are among the most serious threats to the forests of the United States and are causing widespread ecological and economic impacts on the forests of the Nation (Logan and others 2003, Lovett and others 2016, Tobin 2015). Repeated analyses of regularly collected indicator data, such as from the national IDS, enable the detection of trends over time and can help establish a baseline for future comparisons (Riitters and Tkacz 2004).
Parent Publication
Citation
Potter, Kevin M.; Canavin, Julie C.; Koch, Frank H. 2020. Chapter 6 - A forest health retrospective: national and regional results from 20 years of Insect and Disease Survey data. In: Potter, Kevin M.; Conkling, Barbara L., eds. Forest health monitoring: national status, trends, and analysis 2019. Gen. Tech. Rep. SRS-250. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Research Station: 125-149.
