A project entitled, “Assessment of North American Industrial Forests: Disturbances, Biomass Extraction, and Growth Vigor,” was recently selected for funding by NASA’s Land Cover and Land Use Change Program. This three-year project will be led by Drs. Chengquan Huang, Peter Potapov, Matt Hansen and Sam Goward.  This UMD team will collaborate with scientists from NASA, USFS and the Canadian Forest Service to develop data products to quantify forest disturbances, timber extraction and the growth rates of managed forests using satellite imagery, ground measurements and survey data. This project willproduce the most comprehensive data products to date on industrial forests over North America. These are fundamental datasets for model studies to understand the roles of industrial forests in carbon and biogeochemical cycles, the socio-ecological services they provide, and the potential environmental impacts they may have. Spatially and temporally explicit information on industrial forestry dynamics in the US and Canada will bring a greater level of transparency to an economically and environmentally important land use.  In so doing, improved decision-making on forest land management will be enabled.