Free Republic

from http://www.american.com/archive/2007/august-0807/agent-green Agent Green By Stephen Albert and James Dellinger Activists opposed to herbicide use are fighting for a dangerous weed—and increasing forest fire risks. August is the peak of the wildfire season in the Western United States. Last year, over 8 million acres had burned by the end of the month, and this year you can expect the evening news to be filled with even more tragic stories about wildfires spreading across the West, devouring people and property. Who’s to blame? Fingers often point to the federal government’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which controls over 250 million acres...

Products based on NASA Earth observations and a new Internet-based decision tool are providing information to help land and water managers combat tamarisk (saltcedar), an invasive plant species damaging precious water supplies in the western United States. This decision tool, called the Invasive Species Forecasting System (ISFS), is being used at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Institute of Invasive Species Science in Fort Collins, Colo. It is the result of combining USGS science and NASA Earth observations, software engineering and high- performance computing expertise. "The ISFS combines NASA satellite data with tens of thousands of field sampling measurements, which...