This Biological Facilities Center proposal requests funds to establish a joint Facility for Regional Ecosystem Analysis. Scientists at Colorado State University's Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory and College of Forestry and Natural Resources and the University of Colorado's Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research and Center for the Study of Earth from Space will participate in this joint facility for interdisciplinary research. The facility will build on major existing equipment in image processing and simulation modeling but will be expanded to include new mesoscale remote sensing instrumentation, image enhancement and analysis systems, and geographic data analysis software, all integrated into a system that will allow scientists at both institutions to share this powerful technology and cooperate in regional.scale research. Remote sensing creates regional data bases, image processing and spatial data analysis transform and manipulate these data, ecosystems modeling provides a predictive tool for extrapolation. By combining these into a single facility, these techniques will enable a quantum leap in research capabilities.
