River Region Times

Washington, D.C. — Last week, Rep. Barry Moore introduced the bicameral, bipartisan Forest Data Modernization Act with co-author Rep. Kim Schrier (D-WA). This legislation modernizes the technologies and data collection methods used by the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program to meet growing market demand and support sustainable forest management decisions. United States Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Jon Ossoff (D-GA) introduced S.1743, the Senate version of this legislation.

"Alabama foresters deserve updated technology and easily accessible data to help meet the demands of a rapidly growing market," said Moore. "I am grateful to Rep. Schrier for joining me to introduce legislation that ensures foresters, forestry stakeholders, and the American public have access to standardized, high-quality data to support their decisions."

“Mitigating risk in our forests has become ever more important with increasing intensity of wildfires and lengthening wildfire season throughout the West,” said Rep. Schrier. “Land managers and fire chiefs need reliable information about forest health to effectively work to prevent fire, mobilize wildland firefighters during fire, and perform forest restoration work afterward. This legislation will strengthen the FIA program to provide critical data needed to prevent and fight fire more effectively." 

The Forest Data Modernization Act provides:

• Data accessibility by requiring the publication of summary statistics every two years and the creation of a fee-for-service program to handle complex data requests. 
• Data usability by directing the FIA to measure forest carbon and requiring that clear definitions are provided with FIA data to ensure better interpretability of datasets which would allow the forestry sector to leverage collected data consistently.
• Data collection by recommending consideration of advanced technologies for data collection, such as satellite sensors and computer models that could improve data accuracy and reduce costs as well as codifying existing surveys on wood use and forest landownership to ensure continued availability of datasets on which forestry stakeholders rely.
• FIA program transparency by requiring the existing FIA strategic plan to be updated, that future updates be made every five years, and that FIA costs and priorities be published annually.

Click here to listen to Congressman Moore's statement.

Original source can be found here.