NASA satellite map shows vast forests of Vermont

January 31, 2012

Every resident of Vermont knows the state contains some of the country's thickest forests, with trees covering most of the rolling hills and deep valleys of its green terrain.

These rich natural resources make the region one of the best in the country for timber and logging, and the renewable energy sources they produce - ranging from biofuel and bioheat to wood chips to wood pellets.

This week a government agency released a new map of America that makes it official, using satellite imagery to show the distribution of U.S. forests in vivid colors, according to Canadian Biomass magazine.

Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) made the map to reveal the amount of tree cover in the country. Over six years of research, they used computer models, space-based radar, satellite sensors and ground-based data to create a file they claim is the highest-resolution and most-detailed view of forest structure and carbon storage made for any country.

"Forests are a key element for human activity," said Josef Kellndorfer, a researcher at the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) in Massachusetts who worked on the project. "Resource managers need to see forests down to the disturbance resolution - the scale at which parking lots or developments or farms are carved out by deforestation. We have to know how much we have, and where, in order to conduct sound management and harvesting."