ESRI Conservation Program Resources:

Forests & Resource Management

(ECP and CTSP members, sites of interest for mapping/GIS, scholarly papers and ESRI Conference Proceedings, and sites with public conservation and GIS data for downloading) (Under Construction)

(Legend: CTSP sites are coded "c" plus the year of the grant, (cs=software, cm=mac), ECP grantees are coded "e". Many groups, especially newer grantees, do not yet have their own sites and are colored green. Other new groups may be described or supported by other sites)

American Forests, Wash DC e93.(910 17th St. NW, Washington DC 20006 tel:(202)-955-4500 , Contact: Alice Ewen . to join, call 1-800-368-5748) . "Established in 1875, American Forests is a non-profit conservation organization dedicated to improving the environment through the protection and planting of trees. Our Urban Forestry Center uses remote sensing and GIS to track vegetation trends and to quantify the value of trees in urban areas. See our Puget Sound Report to learn more about urban ecosystem analysis and CITYgreen, an ArcView application that helps communities determine the dollar value of local natural resources. Our Forest Policy Center provides policy information and promotes sustainable forest management through community-based ecosystem management programs. Our Global ReLeaf Center creates on-the-ground opportunities for people to improve the environment through the planting of trees in ecosystem restoration projects. With non-profit partners in 20 countries, Global ReLeaf is working to plant 20 million trees by the year 2000. " . GIS Programs: Regional Ecosystem Analysis . " Through the use of Geographic Information Systems technology, AMERICAN FORESTS is helping city managers understand that trees are worth their attention. The Urban Ecosystem Analysis is a process developed by AMERICAN FORESTS that uses a combination of satellite data, GIS technology, and field surveys to document the value of trees in cities and towns. "(see under papers, below) . CITYgreen Software: "CITYgreen is a GIS software application that helps people understand the value of trees to the local environment. Planners and natural resources professionals use the program to test landscape ordinances, evaluate site plans and model development scenarios that capture the benefits of trees. CITYgreen is a GIS solution available to your own community."(for more info see under Methods&Software). Don't miss their Five-Step Plan to Combat Sprawl .

Gifford Pinchot Task Force, Wa c98 ( Gifford Pinchot Task Force, 3932 Biscay St NW, Olympia WA 98502 . or:. PO Box 84542 Vancouver WA 98664-0542 tel360-866-7551 fax:360-786-5054 email:71634.127@compuserve.com) "Since 1985 the Gifford Pinchot Task Force (GPTF) has been the leading conservation group monitoring Gifford Pinchot National Forest (GPNF) management activities, and the only group continually active in all GPNF issues...The GPNF is a key forest as it has the second-largest timber sale program in the Nation and continues to implement controversial projects that include logging old-growth forests, impacts to riparian zones, and incursion into roadless areas....We have found that the maps we make using GIS have been extremely instrumental in helping us achieve our goals. The most recent example of how GIS has been a positive influence was when we presented our proposed management plan for 144,000 acres of the GPNF known as the Cispus Adaptive Management Area. Using ArcInfo software, US Forest Service data and Green River Community College computers we generated a series of GIS coverages comparing our proposed option to agency options. A key map which greatly influenced the decision makers (resulting in a 13 to 1 vote selecting our option) was one which overlaid the existing road system over the agency's preferred option, and then buffered the road system 450' on each side of each road (edge effect) visually displaying the impact the roads had on interior forest conditions and forest fragmentation. " see also Roadless Areas Overview Maps which includes dozens of detailed roadless analysis maps..

Institute for Sustainable Forestry, Ca c98 . (P.O. Box 1580, Redway, CA. 95560-1580 or 101 Coombs Mill Road, Piercy, CA. 95587 tel:(707) 247-1101 fax:(707) 247-3555 Contact: Jude Wait, Executive Director, email:jwait@isf-sw.org isf-sw.org ) "ISF has been building a model for sustainable, watershed-based, community economic development for over 7 years. This model addresses the controversies surrounding forest management, by creating an alternative model, and creates bridges and common ground solutions to resource depletion and watershed degradation. Founding members, advisors and constituents of ISF include foresters, environmentalists, tree-planters, watershed and fisheries restorationists, veterans, business leaders, loggers, landowners and forest-product businesses -- who have the common goals of facilitating leading edge solutions to age-old problems....Through a local stakeholder process, ISF developed the 10 Elements of Sustainability as the basis for the Pacific Certified Ecological Forest Products program. Certification, now implemented in partnership with the international SmartWood Program, provides environmentally acceptable forest management standards, creates market advantage and consumer appeal, and provides an incentive for landowners to practice good forestry." ACHIEVEMENTS: "ISF developed the forest classification map layer and the growth and yield model for the Headwaters Forest Stewardship Plan (Pacific Lumber lands), produced by the Trees Foundation. ISF inventoried, mapped, and analyzed the forest resources on the Intertribal Sinkyone Wilderness, which contributed to the conservation easement governing management of that 3000 acre coastal area in Mendocino County. ISF conducted inventory and harvest projections for our Economic Benefits feasiblity study, which shows that small-scale sustainable forestry is viable in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties, given the implementation of our strategies on non-industrial forest lands. ISF Forestry staff and consultants have conducted reconnaisance parcel evaluations for over 50 landowners in the area, and have completed ecosystem inventories for 4 long term management plans encompassing 1000 acres. "

International Union of Forest Research Organizations, Austria . (c/o Federal Forest Research Institute Seckendorff- Gudent-Weg 8 A-1131 Vienna Austria Tel: +43-1-8770151/ Fax: +43-1-8779355 E-mail office: iufro@forvie.ac.at) . "IUFRO is a non-profit, non-governmental international network of forest scientists. Its objectives are to promote international cooperation in forestry and forest products research. IUFRO's activities are organized primarily through its 268 specialized Units in 8 technical Divisions". . Forest Resource Inventory and Monitoring Newsletter : covers: Statistics, Mathematics, and Computers; Remote Sensing and GIS

Malaysian Timber Council . (18th Floor, Menara PGRM Jalan Pudu Ulu, Cheras 56100 Kuala Lumpur MALAYSIA Tel : + 603 - 981 1999 Fax : + 603 - 982 8999 E-mail : ceo@mtc.com.my URL: http://www.mtc.com.my ) "OBJECTIVES: addressing the supply requirements of logs and other raw materials for processing mills in Peninsular Malaysia, promoting the timber trade in the light of global environmental considerations, providing information, training and technical services to the industry as supplementary efforts undertaken by public agencies, promoting and participating in the commercial establishment of forest plantations addressing issues and undertaking projects of importance to the timber industry. see: GUIDELINES FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF FOREST MANAGEMENT FOR CERTIFICATION and AGREED RECORDS OF DISCUSSIONS BETWEEN MALAYSIAN FORESTRY AND TIMBER ORGANISATIONS AND FOREST STEWARDSIHP COUNCIL (FSC) REGARDING TIMBER CERTIFICATION: "The National Timber Certification Council, Malaysia (NTCC) started its operation on 1 January 1999 to establish and administer an independent third party Malaysian timber certification scheme. The scheme will allow the independent NTCC to issue certificates to timber products sourced from forests that meet forest management certification standards."

Native Forest Council, Or c98 . (P.O. Box 2171 Eugene, OR 97402 (541) 688-2600 mailto:zerocut1@forestcouncil.org) "is the uncompromising leader in national forest and watershed protection. With over 95% of our nation's forests already cut down, the Native Forest Council is working to save all of what's left. The Native Forest Council utilizes ethical, moral, religious, and eco-economic arguments to protect, preserve and recover our nation's national forests and watersheds, and end corporate welfare destructive to the public health and well being. " GIS PROGRESS: "Scientists maintain that without "fundamental changes" in private forest practices, salmon spawning habitat, along with crucial seasonal runs and the community economies that have historically depended on them, will dwindle into extinction. Two main changes must occur in private forest practices: deforestation and landslides must be stopped by leaving a certain number of trees on slopes and riparian zones must be protected from logging....GIS mapping and analysis of model forest areas will be crucial to the success of any reform initiatives and the supportive educational campaigns. " . SEARCH .

Silva Forest Foundation, British Colombia, Canada c99 . (P.O. Box 9, Slocan Park, B.C. V0G 2E0; Phone: 604-226-7222 Fax: 604-226-7446 Email to: silvafor@netidea.com ) The Silva Forest Foundation, (SFF), is a nonprofit charitable organization based in the West Kootenay of British Columbia, Canada.. The board and staff of the SFF are scientists and activists with decades of experience in working with rural communities to develop diverse forest uses which protect, maintain and restore forests.GIS is a major part of the SFF's work. Currently: We have just completed a GIS ecosystem based landscape plan for the Slocan Valley, where we live. We are nearing completion of a similar landscape plan for Cortes Island in the Gulf of Georgia, working in partnership with the Cortes Island Forestry Committee. We are just starting work on another analysis in the Robson Valley area, working with the Dunster Community Association. Proposals for study areas from the Yukon to Labrador are under development.

U of Washington College of Forest Resources, Wa . (Box 352100, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-2100 (206.543.2730) Email -- cfrwww@u.washington.edu, Web -- http://weber.u.washington.edu/~cfrwww/ ) "One of the World's Best Forestry Programs, Number one graduate program and seventh best undergraduate program according to the 7th Revised Edition of the Gourman Report"

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(Legend: ESRI User Conference Papers list the title, then in parentheses "paper" or "abstract" plus the year. Other web-located papers list title, author if known, and excerpt.)

An Area Event System for Forest Management History PDF . ( ESRI Tech Lit Paper ) Date: April 1999 This new white paper presents a data structure to model how area events overlap in time. This data structure may be used to model several common geographic information system (GIS) databases such as an urban land base and mineral deposits and leases. This paper uses forest management as the example area event system. (32 pages, 229 KB)

A Pixel Worth a Thousand Words: Satellite images reveal startling tree loss in American cities. (US News & World Report article by Kathleen Wong, July 19, 1999, with imagery of Puget Sound forests, available as a free PDF Download)

Application of GIS in Soil Survey Projects (1995 ESRI Conf. Abstract, A. Sadjadi)...A physiographic map, derived from aerial photos through stereoscopic interpretation, can be prepared and digitized to form a polygone theme. These two themes, colored point theme showing spatial variations of soils and polygon theme characterizing physiography (geomorphology) of the project area, are then superimposed and matched to delinate final soil mapping units.

Application of the GIS in the Hydrologic Effects Caused by the Second Collective Facility Area Development in Mt. Kyeryong National Park (1995 ESRI Conf. Paper, Ye, Woo-Sung, Lee, Hee-Sun, Lee, Kyoo-seock)...Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore the hydrologic effects due to the second collective facility area development in Mt. Kyeryong National Park using the Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The Rational Method and the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) Method were used to estimate the runoff volume. During this procedure, GIS software, ArcInfo was used to integrate, manipulate, and calculate the attribute value of a number of polygons which represent each land use characteristic. A program was written to compute the attribute value of each polygon and to estimate the difference of peaktime runoff volume before and after construction.

A Decision Support System for Watershed Analysis in the Pacific Northwest (1995 ESRI Conf. Paper, Keith Reynolds, Michael Saunders, Richard Olson, Daniel Schmoldt, Michael Foster, Donald Latham, Bruce Miller, John Steffenson, Lawrence Bednar, and Patrick Cunningham) ...The core of the system is the analysis component which contains dependency networks that link problem-solving knowledge about concerns, ecosystem processes, and data to specific landscape units. The goal dependency approach provides a scientifically sound method for determining data requirements, as well as a basis for prioritizing, acquiring, and evaluating information for watershed analyses. An initial set of concerns that comes from the public participation process expands into a more complete set of concerns that reflects underlying ecological associations. This network approach thus explicitly accounts for both public values and ecological processes.

Developing Biological Survey Standards and Environmental Monitoring to Support Policy Decisions on a Parcel Based GIS (1995 ESRI Conf. Paper, Carolyn Syms Luna, William P. Egetter)...This paper discusses the approach that the County has used to perform environmental monitoring and develop standards for biological surveys so that policy decisions can be made for development related projects using the parcel base. This paper discusses a variety of issues that were examined to develop the necessary applications with specific emphasis on Federally listed endangered and threatened species, AMLs and procedures to present the information in a comprehensible format to a variety of users with differing areas of expertise.

Evaluation Methodology for the Forest Management System (1995 ESRI Conf. Paper, Nobuko NAKAMURA, Yuzuru KIKUCHI, Seizaburo ABE) ...The GIS is widely applied for forest management purposes in Japan recently. We already have developed a Forest Management Database that is covering about 150,000 hectares of forest areas in the Chiba Prefecture. Our new project has been started as an extension of the Forest Management Database project to properly analyze the function of the forest areas.

GIS for Resource Management at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area (1995 ESRI Conf. Paper, Justin Rasas, Shashi Sathisan, and Jonathan Lee.) ..The Lake Mead National Recreation Area (LMNRA), a unit of the National Park Service (NPS), consists of approximately 0.6 million hectares (1.5 million acres) of aquatic and terrestrial habitats. ...Activities to be facilitated by this program include identification of unique habitats, planning efforts in environmental remediation and restoration evaluation; design of park infra-structure; resource management; impact assessment (abuse/misuse/overuse); and enhancement of communications through graphical displays of resource management alternatives. Project objectives, system configuration, data issues and an example application are discussed in this paper.

Multiple objective decision making for land, water and environmental management. (El-Swaify, Samir A.; Yakowitz, Diana S. 1998. ) Lewis Publishers, CRC Press. $79.95. See http://www.crcpress.com/

Is there an answer to mapping old growth? An examination of two projects conducted with remote sensing and GIS, Robert A. Norheim Master's Thesis (Field Station for Protected Area Research, College of Forest Resources, University of Washington, Box 352100, Seattle, WA 98195, Phone: 206 543-9138, Fax 206 543-3254. norheim@u.washington.edu) "During the controversy in the late 1980s over old-growth forest and the northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest, the U.S. Forest Service came under attack for its estimates of the amount of old growth that existed on the National Forests in the Northwest. Using the Forest Service's own inventories, The Wilderness Society estimated that significantly less old growth remained than the Forest Service claimed....In summary, the short timeline for both projects, the nature of the remote sensing devices employed, the differing geographic scope of the projects, the application of the old growth definition, the respective budgets, and the institutional pressures on the projects, all had important impacts on the ways that the projects were conducted and thus on their results."

Regional Ecosystem Analysis Chesapeake Bay Region: Calculating the Value of Nature .(American Forestry Association. P.O. Box 2000 Washington, DC 20013 tel:202-955-4500, ext. 227 email:aewen@amfor.org) "The analysis assessed the value of ecological features using da ta from satellite images spanning a 24-year period from 1973 to 1997...The analysis uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to measure the changing structure of the landscape, with emphasis on tree cover. Changes in the landscape are measured and analyzed using American Forests’ CITYgreen® software which also calculates economic values." See also similar reports at this site for Canton - Akron, OH, City of Tallahasee, FL, Fairfax County, VA, Roanoke, VA.

Regional Ecosystem Analysis Puget Sound Metropolitan Area Calculating the Value of Nature . (American Forestry Association. P.O. Box 2000 Washington, DC 20013 tel:202-955-4500, ext. 227 email:aewen@amfor.org) . "American Forests used satellite data and GIS technology to determine vegetation trends in the region. Since 1972, metropolitan Seattle's heavy tree canopy has declined by 37%. American Forests estimates that the loss of this resource is equivalent to nearly $2.4 billion in stormwater containment services. The report, which received significant media coverage from 3 area newspapers and 5 TV stations, generated great interest from local stake holders. In the coming year, American Forests will be working with the City of Bellevue and other local partners to conduct more in-depth analysis using CITYgreen software. The final project will be showcased at the 9th National Urban Forest Conference, to be held in Seattle in September 1999. Your comments and questions about the Puget Sound Ecosystem Analysis are encouraged. American Forests can also provide information about how you can conduct ecosystem analysis in your community using GIS technology and CITYgreen software."

A Rule-based Application Program for the Purpose of Bio-diversity/Water Quality Planning (1995 Abstract, Reza Ghezelbash, Steve Abbors, Rick Leong) ...A rule-based application program (written in AWK and AML) was developed in order to bring together scientists and land managers from diverse disciplines; to ease the task of translating the project team ideas into ESRI GIS tools; to create a model which can be updated and used for management planning and decision-making over time.

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All text by the respective organizations/authors, January 2, 1997

Web layout & design: Charles Convis, ESRI, January 2, 1996