A
new computer program detected a slow-motion decline, and subsequent revival, of
forests in the Pacific Northwest in recent years. But what was behind this
mysterious pattern?
"It
was, as it turns out, bugs," said Robert Kennedy, a remote sensing
specialist at Boston University who designed the computer program, in a NASA
statement.
Kennedy's
program, called LandTrendr, can detect minute changes in the health of forests
by analyzing wavelengths of light given off by the landscape and recorded in
satellite images. Different types of vegetation reflect different wavelengths
of light, often in ways that the naked eye can't detect.
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