CAMFER was formally established on July 1, 1994, as a Center in the College of Natural Resources on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. It is administered by Co-Directors reporting to the Associate Dean of Research. The research program and center policy are overseen by a faculty Steering Committee. Membership in CAMFER is open to any faculty of the Berkeley campus who shares the goals of the Center and brings time, energy, ideas, and resources to our programs.

 CAMFER was developed to fundamentally improve our capability to monitor the world’s terrestrial ecosystems (our primarily emphasis is on forest, grassland, wetlands and wildlife). The Center encourages interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers to foster joint applied research projects in environmental science. The Center extends resource information science to a diverse user community to improve landuse policies and strategies for conserving the natural environment. CAMFER hosts a collection of image processing and GIS software for analysis of large image sizes, and development of large spatial databases, and integration of results into a GIS for further modeling purposes. The Center owns several Global Positioning System units available for field data collection at sub-meter accuracy positioning capability. It has 4 Sun Ultra stations, 1 SGI, 4 DELL Optiplex workstations, 6 DEC Workstations, and a high-performance server and disk array. The lab has several GIS and remote sensing software packages, a field spectrometer, a thermal radiometer, a large format inkjet color printer, large format digitizing table, Kodak DCS high resolution digital camera, Ashtech single frequency GPS receivers and high precision Trimble GPS receivers and a field mapping unit.

 CAMFER's laboratories and office are located in rooms 111 and 115 Mulford Hall. With over 1,600 square feet, it houses modern remote sensing, GIS, database management, and simulation technologies functioning within a campus network system with high performance compute and file servers and eight 8-bit color workstations. Work space is available for visiting scholars, member and student projects. CAMFER is directly connected to several field research stations providing databases and facilities for field studies and model validation. The CAMFER Center plans to take lead responsibility for selected projects and programs, particularly long-term development, monitoring and evaluation studies, and technology transfer programs.