Chenqquan Huang and John Townshend receive award from United States Geological Survey entitled “Developing Algorithms for Updating LANDFIRE Vegetation Data Sets using MODIS and Landsat Data.”

The project is for one year for $60,000 and will entail the development of highly automatic algorithms for mapping vegetation and land cover changes using satellite images acquired from the Landsat and MODIS systems. The developed algorithms will also separate burned areas from clear cut/harvesting areas and detect partial disturbances to the land cover caused by insect, disease and/or storm damage, as well as minor disturbances such as thinning and fuel treatment.