Inventory of forest and rangeland resources, including forest stress

The author has identified the following significant results. Some current beetle-killed ponderosa pine can be detected on S190-B photography imaged over the Bear Lodge mountains in the Black Hills National Forest. Detections were made on SL-3 imagery (September 13, 1973) using a zoom lens microscope to view the photography. At this time correlations have not been made to all of the known infestation spots in the Bear Lodge mountains; rather, known infestations have been located on the SL-3 imagery. It was determined that the beetle-killed trees were current kills by stereo viewing of SL-3 imagery on one side and SL-2 on the other. A successful technique was developed for mapping current beetle-killed pine using MSS imagery from mission 247 flown by the C-130 over the Black Hills test site in September 1973. Color enhancement processing on the NASA/JSC, DAS system using three MSS channels produced an excellent quality detection map for current kill pine. More importantly it provides a way to inventory the dead trees by relating PCM counts to actual numbers of dead trees.