Photographs of California National Forest lands...
Visual Summary of California Forests
There is much discussion about "healthy forests" these days--a valuable debate about how to use our national forests. The debates continue each summer when catastrophic fires ravage our forests. These fires are part of inevitable change, but they destroy homes, wildlife habitat, aincient forests and watersheds. It is a frustrating expericence for many rural dwellers, activists, non-profits, agency personnel, and politicans who must make decisions about our forests based upon incomplete information when they don't even know what they look like--hence this webpage.
Each year East-West Forestry visits randomly selected forest monitoring locations (FIA plots). At each location, along with collecting a lot of tree, vegetation, forest fuels, and wildlife habitat data, we photograph the plot. This webpage presents one photograph from every plot we have visited since May 2000. These are ALL photographs from locations randomly distributed throughout our public national forests. Together they provide a visual representation of California's federal forest lands. They show our forests and what they look like. You should be able to pick out forest fuels, dead trees, species diversity, canopy cover, and get a feeling for California biodiversity. Although we cannot provide precise information on the location of each plot, generalized maps are provided through the links below. For more information or technical details please contact tgaman@forestdata.com
12/15/2003
