A new online system that maps a rich trove of environmental data of southern U.S. forests onto satellite images from the past 35 years was launched today by the World Resources Institute (WRI).
The system, located at SeeSouthernForests.org, highlights risks to these forests such as pest and pathogen outbreaks, active wildfires, potential climate change impacts, and forest conversion to suburban development – the leading cause of southern U.S. forest loss in recent decades. The system also maps other features such as the region’s protected areas and forest ownership.
said Jonathan Lash, president of WRI. “The pattern of forest cover loss in this region has been acres here and acres there. Continuous but dispersed change often goes unnoticed. This new online system addresses that.”
Stretching from Texas to Virginia and from Kentucky to Florida, the southern U.S. forests are among the world’s most biologically diverse temperate forests. Though they comprise just two percent of the planet’s forest cover, they underpin hundreds of thousands of jobs and produce more pulp for paper by volume than any single nation – other than the entire United States.