Craig Woodruff presented at the North American Forest Ecology Workshop in June 2026 during a special session titled “From Inventory to Resilience: Rethinking Forest Monitoring for a Disturbance-Prone Era.” His presentation focused on using drone-based remote sensing to rapidly assess fuel structure in young forests following reburns — work with direct implications for wildfire management as fire seasons become more frequent and severe.
Abstract:
Young forests are often used by fire managers as reliable fuel breaks; however, the historic fire season of 2023 demonstrated fires can reburn these young forests at short intervals. We require nimble and rapid data collection strategies to inform fire management decisions when conditions may support burning of young forests. Specifically, post fire monitoring of these young forests after a reburn may help inform which forests are vulnerable given their post fire fuel structure. Remote sensing with drones is well suited to supporting these needs. We surveyed three sites in October 2025 that covered a soil drainage gradient and burned three times in the last 70 years, and three that covered a comparable moisture gradient but burned two times. We collected high resolution (<1 cm) visual drone data and field data. All six sites burned in 2025 prior to our data collection. We use structure from motion and machine learning to map key post fire fuel parameters. We compare our drone-based estimates of fuel between the sites that burned twice with those that burned three times. We demonstrate drones can rapidly collect detailed and accurate information about fuels in young forests post reburn, which enables assessment of future reburn vulnerability.
