'Game Changer': App helps land managers and firefighters
Missoula - Researchers at the University of Montana have announced a new free high-tech tool used to better understand forests and rangelands across the country.
The university unveiled a nationwide mapping product that shows the height and structure of trees and shrubs in remarkable detail.
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"And so this application is one of the first of its kind that puts that really fine-grained information into people's hands so that they can make decisions for land management," Dr. Scott Morford, a UM research scientist, told MTN News.
Morford says the app, known as NAIP-CHM, is super useful for land managers, ranchers, and conservation planners.
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Marcozzi says, in addition, when a fire event is actually happening, the app can help officials understand how it's spreading, areas it might move to, and what the expected fire behavior is if the blaze moves into a specific area.
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"This type of information has been available before, but it's been hard to process, or it's been really localized," he said. "What this does is it allows anybody who is doing any type of land management or interested in these infrastructure questions to have data at their fingertips in just a matter of minutes, rather than maybe hours or days of data processing."
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