Working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, NASA’s Stennis Space Center developed ForWarn, an environmental monitoring and assessment tool that detects and tracks changes in forest vegetation nationwide. ForWarn software analyzes multispectral satellite imagery collected by MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. Every 8 days, the software identifies in near real time potential forest disturbances caused by insects, drought, storms, blights, wildfires, and other events across the nation. The Forest Change Assessment Viewer for ForWarn enables users to view these changes on a map.
NASA engineers used MATLAB® to help develop and deploy ForWarn while working with other government agency partners.
“With MATLAB we produced prototypes and built products much faster than would have been possible using a traditional programming language, such as C,” says Duane Armstrong, chief of the Advanced Technology & Technology Transfer branch at the NASA Stennis Space Center. “The quick turnaround enabled by MATLAB let us demonstrate new capabilities to our customers at the Forest Service very quickly.”
U.S. Forest Change Assessment Viewer map showing vegetation changes in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, following a 2016 fire (fire perimeter shown in dark red). Image courtesy ForWarn.