U.S. Forest Service Chief Thomas Tidwell Presents Honor Award to ForWarn Team

The ForWarn team received a Chief's Honor Award from U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell at a ceremony held on March 17 in Washington, D.C. William Hargrove, Eastern Threat Center research ecologist and lead ForWarn researcher, accepted the award on behalf of the team. The award comes for the team's role in the creation of ForWarn, the early warning system that tracks forest disturbances and changes in real time. ForWarn, which was officially released in 2012 in partnership with several agencies, has improved the U.S. Forest Service's ability to spot, investigate and respond to the variety of threats to forest sustainability, including insects, disease, wildfire, storms, and human activity.

The interagency ForWarn team includes scientists and staff from U.S. Forest Service Eastern Forest and Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Centers, the NASA Stennis Space Center, UNC Asheville's National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center, the U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science Center.

For more information, see the news release.