Dr. Samuel N. Goward has been awarded a $328,000 NASA grant to evaluate potential approaches for monitoring Mid-Atlantic forest-cover change, disturbance, and recovery with passive optical satellite remote sensing observations in support of the North American Carbon Program. For this project, forest-cover change is defined as permanent conversion in the type or extent of forest, while disturbance is defined as a transient reduction in forest biomass followed by a recovery period. Either process may be of natural or human origin. The intended outcome of this research is a validated set of techniques for exploiting passive optical remote sensing to provide the needed forest measurements in eastern U.S. forests that will support NACP goals. The project will also provide the community with the first “spectral-structural” database of paired multi-temporal Landsat radiometry and FIA forest attribute data. This will allow other researchers to develop alternative approaches for remote sensing of forest structure using a common validation approach, while not breaching the confidentiality of FIA plot locations.