ForestPARC 
The Forestry Remote Sensing Outreach Program
Research People Success Stories UMAC Site Map
History and Scope of ForestPARC:
In 2003, The Forest Public Access Resource Center (ForestPARC) was formed by the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium (UMAC), which focuses on the dissemination of remote sensing to regional stakeholders, through cutting-edge research, education, products, and extension activities. The UMAC region covers Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota and contains large areas of forest, rangeland, and wilderness areas. The focus of ForestPARC is on using remote sensing to evaluate forest and wildland ecology applications.
ForestPARC is set apart form other research collaborations due to its rich diversity of both technical expertise and access to different experimental field sites.
 The lead institutions are located in a geographical transect that incorporates several natural gradients that include species composition, topology, and elevation. Technical expertise covers the acquisition and analysis of Lidar, TIR data, hyperspectral data,and of numerous broadband satellite sensors.
Science and Extension Focus Areas:
Link to Project Summary Page
Remote Sensing Methods and Applications:
- Pre-fire fuel conditions, Active Fire Behavior, and Post-Fire ecological effects.
JFS Fire Synthesis Project
- Assessment of Snow Albedos
- Data Fusion
- Textural and Wavelet Analysis
Spatial Wavelet Analysis Project
Remote Sensing Systems:
- Development of a New Hyperspectral Sensor:
HAMCAM
- Development of TIR systems and Applications:
Fire Radiative Energy Projects
UM: Fire Monitoring System
See News report
- Lidar: Acquisition, Processing, and Products:
Vegetation Canopy and Surface Parameters
Bare Earth Generation Models
Spatial Wavelet Analysis Project
Regional Lidar Research
News and Recent Events:
March 2007: UMAC Graduate Student Conference, University of Idaho
ForestPARC at the University of Idaho will host the 4th Annual Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium's graduate student conference. This will be a forum for graduate students to share their research ideas and results with fellow UMAC graduate students.
April 2006: USDA FS Remote Sensing Application Center National Conference
ForestPARC coordinated with RSAC and hosted a half-day session on 'The Remote Sensing of Post-fire Effects'. This session was followed by an expert panel question and answer session. The panel of national experts and included: Caty Clifton, Colin Hardy, Randy McKinley, Annette Parsons, Peter Robichaud , Brian Schwind, Henry Shovic, and Dean Sirucek.
November 2005: Visit of Rick Lawrence (MSU) to UI;
Dr Rick Lawrence (Montana State University/Bozeman) visited the University of Idaho and participated in both a research seminar on the usage of Classification trees in remote sensing; and discussed with the UI ForestPARC participants potential content of future ForestPARC research proposals.
 May 2005: 2nd Annual ForestPARC Workshop: This included the 3rd Annual Meetings of ForestPARC Collaborators
 To encourage more national participation, ForestPARC cosponsored this workshop with the USDA Remote Sensing Applications Center (RSAC) in Salt Lake City. The workshop involved over 100 persons, including university researchers, forest service managers and researchers, students, and lidar vendors.
  
As shown above, this workshop included an Expert Panel Discussion, Vendor presentations, and Breakout sessions.
The presentations of this workshop are available on CD-ROM from RSAC.
Updated 17th November 2005
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