Visualizing tree crowns for forest managers: informatics tools enhance natural resource management

Ecologists aim to answer fundamental scientific questions regarding the natural world. Resource managers make practical decisions about natural resources, often with incomplete data. Our goal is to make research results more available to managers who decide which trees to leave when a forest stand is harvested. To that end, we work with Washington State resource managers and forest canopy researchers to: 1) determine what information technology might make new ecology research more applicable to managers, 2) articulate ecological values that dictate leave trees, 3) understand how those values are communicated. We have designed a catalog of tree crown structure with visualizations and metrics that help interpret complex research data for practitioners. This work extends prior NSF work to build research tools for ecologists, and addresses information technology issues of data presentation and data quality.