The western United States is home to many woodpecker species that are strongly associated with recently disturbed forests, including post wildfire and post-beetle outbreaks. These types of landscapes are favored habitat because the dead and dying trees provide nesting and foraging substrates. When managing these landscapes, managers must balance providing habitat for woodpeckers considered species of conservation concern with conducting salvage logging sales that generate economic revenue for the surrounding communities. Until recently, managers couldn’t be certain where suitable woodpecker habitat was located and whether the salvage logging would ...

The Forest Service, the Southern Blues Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project, and the Blue Mountains Forest Partners worked together to build a web application that would help map and monitor changes in land cover and landscape pattern as a result of management activities and disturbances. One of the most important considerations for this work was that it should be inclusive of all agencies and organizations that collaboratively manage the landscape; as such, the workflow needed to be developed in an accessible location, without the use of proprietary data, without the use of costly software licenses, and in a manner that would be ...