One objective is to provide a report to the public on the health of the region's natural resources and the social implications arising from this. Four teams are assessing the health of terrestrial, aquatic, and atmospheric ecosystems, and the social, cultural, and economic consequences. Many more people are involved, feeding information to the team leaders. Much information already has been gathered, and various team members gave short reports on their activities. A massive amount of information from the assessment is already in hand and is being fed into a Geographic Information Systems data base.
Some data already are available to assessment team leaders.
When completed, the data base will be housed at the University of Tennessee and available to computer users on Internet. Many of these themes have multiple scales of data. It is made up of representatives from six agencies. They will determine current trends, the effects of air pollution, the results of past management practices, and the effects of fires on the forests. The status of threatened and endangered species is being assessed.