Forest Innovation Platform.
Stewarding resilient forests.
With extreme wildfires more than doubling over the last two decades, an ongoing 25-year mega drought throughout the western U.S. and pests and disease impacting forests across the country, proactive forest management is critical. The Forest Innovation Platform provides accessible, actionable data across private, state, Tribal, federal and NGO lands so forest managers can evaluate vulnerabilities and protect their lands from fire and other natural disasters.
From fragmented forest data to targeted climate action.
Empowering every user to plan for climate risks.
FIP by American Forests is the most comprehensive and actionable forest data tool ever developed. The open-source tool incorporates over 40 datasets and allows users to create on-demand custom assessments for specific areas, without the need for specialized expertise or months of manual analysis.
To develop the tool, American Forests engaged hundreds of scientists, federal agency partners, NGOs and practitioners. Expert partners helped identify data gaps and functionality essential to forest management. Therefore, FIP includes over 900 map layers showing historical climate and fires; projections of fire, drought, and habitat suitability; future scenarios and uncertainty intervals.
In addition to analyzing forest areas chosen by the users, the Forest Innovation Platform includes over 6000 states, counties, forests, parks, and other regions that users can explore without creating an account. With all this data one might not know where to start. That’s why expert and non-expert users alike will benefit from built-in features that guide them through how climate change is affecting their area, why it matters, and what they can do about it.
Regardless of background, users will be able to easily track climate trends, generate forest assessments, and download reports complete with graphs, maps, and tailored analyses to share with their collaborators. They’ll also benefit from using an experimental AI assistant that can highlight indicators that are most relevant to their forest.
Forest Assessment Tool.
Designed with a strong focus on accessibility, this tool allows users to create on-demand custom assessments for specific areas.
Users can evaluate potential climate, wildfire, hydrological, and ecological changes that impact forest health today and identify the projected risk over time to inform forest management plans and adaptation strategies.
Data Hub.
It is a central repository for authoritative climate and forest vulnerability data. It ensures access to high-quality, vetted datasets for conducting assessments.
Resource Library.
This section provides a curated collection of external resources complementing the built-in features of the Forest Innovation Platform.
These resources offer additional modeling, forecasting, and analysis functionalities, enabling users to extend their decision-making capabilities.
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Developing the Forest Innovation Platform.
Delivered with impact.
We added value to this project by transforming a complex landscape of climate, forest, and biodiversity data into an intuitive decision-support experience designed around the real needs of land managers.
The undertaking was challenging because it required bringing together diverse datasets, existing tools, and climate-risk information, while ensuring that the resulting platform could support rigorous, climate-informed planning and assessments.
A key strength of the work was creating a coherent ecosystem that connected large datasets and existing climate-risk decision-support tools, as well as an accessible narrative making information that is often fragmented or technically difficult to navigate actionable.
We brought together diverse datasets into a clear, intuitive platform that helps a wide range of users (from non-experts to tech and data savvy) move from understanding climate risk to identifying practical adaptation strategies.
We created an integrated experience making fragmented resources easier to discover and use.
Through close attention to user needs, we delivered a flexible decision-support platform that strengthens the user's ability to support climate-resilient forest management.
