GIS and Forestry: The Poor Cousin Comes of Age
By J.D. Wilson

Forest management is not the profession it once was.
      Economic, social, regulatory and political forces are pressing from all sides and professional foresters are caught in a paralyzing grip as they grapple with needs and interests that are often at odds.
      Demand for timber grows each year as national and international markets clamor for more and more construction grade lumber. At the same time, the nation's forests also are becoming the nation's playground.
      Weekend warriors converge on the nation's forests in greater numbers each year bringing along their hiking gear, camping equipment, mountain bikes and off-road vehicles. Along the edges, civilization encroaches as more forest land is sacrificed to the demand for more homes, commercial space and agricultural land.
      All the while, society, enlightened by the environmental consciousness of the '90s, is demanding that we protect the nation's forest resources-without any inconvenience of course. Pressure is mounting to find a suitable balance between recreation, timber production and alternative land uses on one side and forest preservation and regeneration on the other.
      "There is a greater focus on the shrinking resources base. Forest ownership requires intensive management," said John Koltun, director, GIS services, of Geographic Resource Solutions in Arcata, Calif. "Private industry is under a very watchful eye. Managers must be able to analyze and justify what they are doing."

GeoTechnology Vacuum
As environmental regulations get more strict, public scrutiny more intense and forest resources more scarce, both public and private forest managers are counting on GeoTechnologies to help them better understand and manage the forest resources in their charge. But the forestry industry, as a whole, has been slower to adopt geographic information systems (GIS) and related technologies than its counterparts in oil and gas, geology and land management.
      "Forestry has been the poor cousin to other natural resources," explained David Edson, vice president of natural resources for James W. Sewall Co. of Old Town, Maine. "They have trailed behind other industries in adopting high tech spatial data management tools."
      Although some larger forestry companies, like Simpson Timber and Potlatch Corp., embraced GIS early, many smaller land owners and, to some degree, government agencies still rely on USGS Quadrangle paper maps and overlays. Cost constraints and limited budgets have forced forest managers to rely on cruder and less reliable data management tools much longer than they would have liked.
      "GIS has entered the forestry ranks gradually," explained Joyce Mousseau, GIS manager for Condor Earth Technologies Inc. of Sonora, Calif. "That is changing now."
      She explained the National Forest Service's Project 615, a complete overhaul of its aging national computer network will include a networked ARC/Info GIS installation to accommodate the growing need to support forest management tasks with spatial data and analysis.

Not Just Trees, Ecosystems
"We're moving toward ecosystem management, not just project-specific analysis," Mousseau added. "GIS enables the forest manager to get a better look at the big picture, and consequently make better-informed decisions."
      Koltun agrees. "Companies must determine the impact of their actions on wildlife and fisheries and watersheds," he said.
      This new approach is now mandated in many states, including California and Oregon. It represents a fundamental shift in the regulatory approach, requiring forest companies to track and analyze the overall environmental impact of their activities. "They have to track wildlife existence and habitat, native plant species other than trees, fisheries and soil types," Koltun explained.
      "Foresters are using GIS to perform growth and yield modeling, determine the sustainability of their harvesting and predict future yields," he said. "In some cases, foresters are gathering and analyzing 30 or more themes of data for a single harvest plan. Forestry is becoming an agricultural discipline."

Affordable GIS
Fortunately, Koltun added, the cost of setting up a GIS has dropped substantially in recent years, making the technology more accessible. "There's a much lower price tag on hardware and software, and a greater availability of data," he said.
      "Lower cost, easier to use GIS alternatives have helped bring the technology within reach of even the smallest forest land owners," explained George Gross, president of Spencer B. Gross Inc., Portland, Ore. "It enables managers to overcome the limitations of the Public Land Survey System, which is not very accurate. It can be off by hundreds of feet."
      Perhaps more problematic, today, the inventory of forest lands is mapped primarily to ownership units, based on sections. But if foresters are to perform analysis based on watershed or other ecological units, they will need to transcend traditional mapping standards based on ownership and political boundaries.
      "It's not enough to have information on your own land, you have to understand and be able to show how actions made on your property will impact the entire ecosystem," he explained. "For that you need information on your neighbors' lands and they need information on yours. That requires a lot of cooperation."
      Recognizing the dilemma-and the opportunity, Gross recently took a calculated risk and began developing a single database covering more than five million acres of forest land in Oregon.
      Efforts to start a joint project to collect the data, seemed terminally stalled in debate, as dozens of different ownership groups, including the state forest service, struggled to agree to standards. Gross decided to take the initiative.
      He developed his own list of the core requirements and proposed to create and manage the database at his own expense and resell the information to landowners on an incremental basis. "It was a big risk for me at the time," Gross admitted. "We had to bear the financial burden of the ground control and aerial photography before anyone signed up."
      The gamble paid off. Most of the land owners in the area, as well as the state forest service, have bought in to the program. For the participants, the benefits are manifold:
• Depending on their needs, they can expect to save up to 50 percent or more of the cost of collecting the data on a project-by-project basis.
• Participants agree to provide certain layers of privately-held data for the database, such as roads, gates (access limitation) and section corners. Consequently, users can perform analysis based on a whole ecosystem without having to intrude each others' land.
• Since everyone is using compatible data, reporting and compliance is simplified.
      Gross' experiment is not an isolated case. Motivated by similar frustrations, needs and market conditions, other companies are taking a similar approach to collecting regional spatial data. In some cases, new companies, like Herndon, Va.-based Vargis, have been formed just to collect and produce data sets as a com-mercial enterprise.
      Managing Director John Veatch explained that data producers know enough about the requirements for various applications to anticipate the needs, develop and maintain data sets of different detail and quality, and provide those data ready-to-use when clients need them.

Low Cost Data Collection
Ready-made data sets of this nature are a relatively new phenomenon and owe their existence to the emergence and integration of efficient, less-expensive data collection technologies-in particular, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and satellite imaging.
      "We have witnessed whole-hearted acceptance of GPS in the natural resources management," said Sewall's Edson. With its highly-publicized use in the Gulf War, GPS has nearly become a household word.
      GPS downloads easily to most GIS software and its portable enough for rigorous field survey projects. "We now use it to trigger the aerial cameras in our aircraft," Edson added.
      Condor's Mousseau said that GPS has become so well-accepted in natural resources, her company has developed and markets field collection systems incorporating GPS technology.
      "Gathering data is still far and away the largest expense in any mapping project," Mousseau explained. Condor developed its "PlanMap" system which incorporates a GPS board installed in a pen-based computer. As technicians perform a field inventory, they collect GPS coordinates and add the attribute information directly into the computer. When they return, the data are downloaded directly to the client's GIS.
      "It's a near real time data collection system," Mousseau added.
      Additionally, satellite imaging is on a fast track to be the next fully-commercialized technology to come out of the military-space complex, fueled by the Cold War of the last three decades.
      Lockheed, Earthwatch and TRW, among others, plan to launch commercial imaging satellites by the end of the century. The result is lower costs and more use-specific images of the Earth.
      For foresters and other GIS users the availability of relatively cheap satellite photos means they can create a real-world image of an area as a base map. And the basemap already contains much of the information they, eliminating or at least reducing the scope of time-consuming and expensive field surveys.
      The use of satellite imaging and GPS shortens the time frame for gathering data, making analysis more timely as well as less expensive. "This is a fortunate bonus, since foresters have to respond to regulators' requests in as little as 60 days," Gross said, "They have to deal with a lot more issues and more stringent requirements, usually with much shorter time constraints."

Regulatory Melange
In the effort to protect forest resources, the number of state and federal regulations are growing faster than the trees they are designed to protect. For forestry managers, whether private or public, the tangle of laws, regulations, reports and approvals has changed the fundamental nature of their job.
      Mousseau, a professional forester who has worked in both the public and private sectors, worries about what she calls "the politicization of forest management."
      "Decisions are made in Congress instead of in the field," Mousseau said. While she acknowledges the need for a coherent national policy to protect everyone's interest in the forests, she is troubled by the level of bureaucracy stifling forest managers and forestry activity today.
      She stressed that a healthy forest environment comes from understanding the natural rhythms and characteristics of a forest ecosystem and finding a prudent balance of human activities within the forest. Some activities may harm or diminish the forest and others support and replenish the resources, but all must be managed to meet society's needs and preserve the delicate resource for future generations.
      "Management decisions need to made close to the land," she said.

Public Perception
Sewall's Edson fears the forestry industry is losing ground in the arena of public opinion. "I'm concerned about the public perception of how forests are being managed," Edson said. The debate has been framed in a good-against-evil, all-or-nothing context, which obscures the realities of the situation, he explained. "Regardless of their use for the forest no one wants to see them disappear."
      Not surprisingly, there is little disagreement on this issue, even among the most ardent opponents. Beneath the rhetoric, all parties agree that forests are a perishable resource that must be thoughtfully managed, preserved and renewed for future use.
      Forestry companies, whose livelihood is based on timber harvesting, recognize the need to think long term. Unlike wheat or corn, which are harvest, planted and harvested again annually, the renewal cycle for forest products is counted in multiple decades-centuries for some species. The stereotype of the timber crew clear-cutting whole forests and leaving bare mountainsides exposed to the ravages of harsh winds, rain and snow bear little resemblance to modern timber practices.
      Taking a long-term view, forestry managers are building massive and sophisticated GIS databases to monitor, manage their lands and plan strategic, selective cutting that improve the growing cycles and renew the resources.

Just-in-Time Technology
"From this perspective, you could call GIS a just-in-time technology," Edson said. "The introduction of the computer has made some aspects of management easier and raised the ante in reporting and accountability. These tools are necessary to improve all aspects of natural resource management."
      But Edson cautions that GIS is only a tool, not a solution to the challenges and issues facing the forest industry. "We must be careful not to put too much faith in technology without a review of how decision-making is being changed by it," he declared.
      It can be dangerous to base decisions on numbers spewed out of a computer, without understanding the research and logic behind them. "Fortunately, new managers are rising in the industry who are more comfortable with technology," Edson concluded. "They know how to apply these tools effectively."
      Like other natural resource management disciplines, forestry is a quantitative science, Edson said. "GIS makes it possible to apply science to the lowest quantitative level. It enables all parties in the debate to get beyond the rhetoric and quantify the impact of a particular action on the forest both in the present and the future."

About the Author:
J.D. Wilson is a freelance writer in Denver, Colo., specializing in the GeoTechnologies. He may be reached at 303-751-7636.

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