New Instrument Expanding Individual Tree Stem Analyses

-Forest health, vitality, and productivity are interrelated and are maintained by using sound forest management. There are some standard indicators that are measured to assess the extent and severity of damage inflicted by biotic and abiotic agents. Assessment of these indicators using affordable methods is a subjective process. A video rangefinder instrument is presented here as an advance toward efficient collection of objective components of these indicators. This paper describes how rapidly collected quantitative variables such as lengths, diameters, light penetration, etc. can be useful for applying some existing sampling methods and allowing the exploration of new methods that were previously considered intractable. INTRODUCTION The concern for forest health, vitality and sustainable productivity has escalated since the Santiago Declaration (Anonymous 1995). Many projects have collected this information on a project or forest stand basis. The Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) program within the USDA Forest Service has been given the charge to collect, analyze, and compile these data on national and