Projects

Michigan’s forests provide critical ecosystem services and contribute substantially to the state’s socio-economic fabric. However, they face unprecedented environmental change, driven by climate change and unsustainable management, raising urgent concerns for their future. Effective management strategies crucially depend on a comprehensive understanding of the pace, magnitude, and drivers of these changes.

This project seeks to bridge this integration gap by leveraging ground data, remote sensing, predictive ecological models, and artificial intelligence techniques to facilitate a seamless flow of information from scientific inquiry to applied forest stewardship. Our expected outcomes include state-wide, time-series data on forest biomass with unprecedented detail, rigorous modeling to understand the drivers of change across time, and to explore the future of Michigan’s forest, as well as an innovative tool with conversational capabilities to facilitate stakeholder engagement.