Program on the Environment

In the era of climate change, our forests are having to put up with many disturbances that can have rapid and oftentimes permanent effects. With this increase in temperature comes the possibility of compounding disturbances which can drastically alter forest ecosystems if not discovered early on. Compounding disturbances refers to one disturbance creating a favorable condition for another disturbance to thrive and so on. That’s where developed management resources come into play. Oftentimes compounding disturbances are not found because it takes a lot of man hours to survey an entire section of the forest. With the advancement of AI technology, scientists can create a digital model of the forest and run scenarios. This technology can also help find patterns in data to predict when an outbreak or compounding condition will occur. For my internship I spent a few weeks with the Washington Department of Natural Resources in the Olympic Mountains by Forks Washington and conducted habitat surveys of different logging techniques. In all the sites an abundance of dead wood was present. Having reliable technology can not only eliminate many unnecessary man hours but also keep those in charge of the forests up to date with any changes that are currently happening instead of discovering them too late. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of compounding disturbances on our forests as well as beginning to think ahead of how to implement AI resources to better prepare us to combat these issues.