HARVEST

Wiki quality control

Has flag	N/A

Name, responsible organisation and contact person

Has full name	HARVEST for Windows
Has acronym	Timber Harvest Simulation Model
Has wiki contact person	Eric Gustafson and Luke Rasmussen
Has wiki contact e-mail	egustafson@fs.fed.us

Software identification

Has software	HARVEST.Software

Description

Has description	HARVEST was designed as a strategic research and planning tool, allowing assessment of the spatial pattern consequences of broad timber management strategies. The model is well suited to evaluate alternative strategies, providing comparable predictions about how the alternatives affect the age (or successional stage) distribution of the forest, the spatial distribution of forest interior and edge habitats, and the patch structure of the resulting forest landscape. With HARVEST, the object is not to find a scheduling solution (i.e., determining the order in which individual stands should be harvested), but to assess the spatial pattern consequences of general management strategies. HARVEST has been shown to generate patterns similar to those produced by timber management (Gustafson and Crow 1999). HARVEST simulates harvest practices that reset the age of forested sites to zero. This includes even-aged timber harvest techniques (e.g., clearcutting, shelterwood, seed tree techniques) and uneven-aged group selection. It is not capable of simulating single tree selection because these treatments do not predictably change forest age. HARVEST allows the user to interactively simulate harvest by forest type and management area. Management Areas are relatively large, multi-stand areas that are to be managed by specific objectives. The user specifies harvest parameters (such as harvest size, rotation age, green-up interval), for a management area and forest type. The process may be repeated for multiple time steps. Because HARVEST is a stochastic simulation model, you will get a somewhat different result each time you run a given set of parameters on the same set of maps (if you use a different random number seed). However, this is also true in real life, where you will get different management plan implementations if you give different project-level planners the same task. HARVEST is a powerful tool to compare the spatial pattern expected under alternative management scenarios. These alternatives may differ in the boundaries and objectives of management areas, the intensity of harvest (area cut), the size of harvest units, the dispersion of openings, or some combination. HARVEST ignores many forest conditions and lots of simplifying assumptions were made. It should not be used to support project-level planning except as a heuristic (what-if?) device. Assumptions: 1) Forest age replace all other factors of decision making of harvest in reality such as stocking density, size class, site conditions, accessibility and operability. 2) HARVEST randomly selects suitable stands. 3) Forest type of a stand is assigned based on the type that is most abundant within the stand. 4) Forest succession processes are not simulated. 5) Stand boundaries do not change.
Has modelling scope	Forest indicators
Has temporal scale	Long term (strategic)
Has spatial context	Non spatial, Spatial with neighbourhood interrelations
Has spatial scale	Stand level
Has objectives dimension	Multiple objectives
Has related DSS
Has goods and services dimension	Non-market services
Has decision making dimension	More than one decision maker
Has forest management goal	conservation, forest fuel harvesting, forest transformation, landscape quality, silvicultural regime
Supports tree species	No
Supports silvicultural regime	even-aged, uneven-aged/natural regeneration, uneven-aged/plantation

Concrete application

Has typical use case	HARVEST allows the user to interactively simulate harvest activities that are targeted to forest type and management area. How much of timber should I harvest in tis age class if I wish have every year same revenues from harvest?
Has user profile	Non-industrial private owners, forest owners associations
Has country	United States
Has references about examples of application
Has number of users	N/A
Has number of real-life applications	N/A
Has utilisation in education	used by students
Has research project reference
Has tool dissemination

Decision support techniques used in the DSS

Has decision support techniques	HARVEST.Decision support techniques

Support of Knowledge Management

Has knowledge management processes	HARVEST.Knowledge management process

Support of social participation

Has support for social participation	HARVEST.Support of social participation

DSS development

Has DSS development	HARVEST.Description of DSS development

Documentation

Has website	http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/tools/harvest/
Has online demo
Has manual	Yes
Has technical documentation	Yes
Has reference

General System description

System Name: HARVEST

Brief overview

HARVEST is a strategic research and planning tool, allowing assessment of the spatial pattern consequences of broad timber management strategies.

Scope of the system

HARVEST was designed as a strategic research and planning tool, allowing assessment of the spatial pattern consequences of broad timber management strategies. The model is well suited to evaluate alternative strategies, providing comparable predictions about how the alternatives affect the age (or successional stage) distribution of the forest, the spatial distribution of forest interior and edge habitats, and the patch structure of the resulting forest landscape. With HARVEST, the object is not to find a scheduling solution (i.e., determining the order in which individual stands should be harvested), but to assess the spatial pattern consequences of general management strategies. HARVEST has been shown to generate patterns similar to those produced by timber management (Gustafson and Crow 1999).

HARVEST simulates harvest practices that reset the age of forested sites to zero. This includes even-aged timber harvest techniques (e.g., clearcutting, shelterwood, seed tree techniques) and uneven-aged group selection. It is not capable of simulating single tree selection because these treatments do not predictably change forest age. HARVEST allows the user to interactively simulate harvest by forest type and management area. Management Areas are relatively large, multi-stand areas that are to be managed by specific objectives. The user specifies harvest parameters (such as harvest size, rotation age, green-up interval), for a management area and forest type. The process may be repeated for multiple time steps.

Version 6.1 added the ability to simulate conversion of stands to different forest types during the model run, as well as the ability to view all the basic maps (age, type, management) from inside the program. It includes calculation of the fragmentation index GISfrag (Ripple et al. 1991) and links to the spatial pattern analysis software APACK.

Support for specific issues

• Landscape planning

Support for specific thematic areas of a problem type

• Silvicultural
• Certification
• Conservation
• Policy /intervention alternatives

Capability to support decision making phases

[Intelligence, Design, Choice, Monitoring ]

Related systems

• Spec2Harv program also available for automating the conversion of harvest schedules generated by the Forest Service's Spectrum model into script files that can be used by the HARVEST simulation model to simulate the implementation of the Spectrum schedules in a spatially explicit way. Thus, the optimal harvest schedule from Spectrum is simulated spatially and temporally with HARVEST.
• HarvLite is an educational version that offers an easy to use interface and gives the user a feel for what HARVEST has to offer.

Input files must be in an Erdas v7.4+, 8- or 16-bit GIS file format; many common GIS programs can export this format.

Data and data models

Typical spatial extent of application

• Multi-owner forest

Used to over 100m acres

Forest data input

HARVEST operates on a grid-cell (raster) representation of the landscape. HARVEST requires a set of 4 input map files to simulate harvest activity: forest age map, forest type map, management area map, and a stand identification number (ID) map.

Type of information input from user (via GUI)

• Management
• Biophysical

Models

Forest models

• Silvicultural
• Fragmentation

Decision Support

Definition of management interventions

[Define what is available for the manager to intervene in the forest: time of harvest, plantations, thinnings, reconversions...Existence of prescription writer, simple enumeration of all possibilities, scenario simulation , etc.]

HARVEST simulates harvest practices that reset the age of forested sites to a specific age. This includes even-aged timber harvest techniques (e.g., clearcutting, shelterwood, seed tree techniques) and unevenaged group selection. Version 6.1 has some capability to simulate other uneven-aged techniques where such treatments predictably change stand structure, by using stand age as a surrogate for stand structure.

HARVEST allows the user to interactively simulate harvest activities that are targeted to forest type and management area (MA). Management areas are relatively large, multi-stand areas that are to be managed by specific objectives. The user specifies harvest parameters (such as harvest size, rotation age, green-up interval), for a management area and forest type. The process may be repeated for multiple management area/forest type combinations and time steps.

Typical temporal scale of application

[Define the temporal scale of the application: E.g., operational and immediate level, Tactical planning (short term) and strategic level.]

Decision-making processes and models

• Simulation
• Evaluation

HARVEST is a standalone simulation model. However, it can be linked to an optimization model via Spec2Harv software.

Output

Types of outputs

Forest age and type maps, plus other spatial analyses (see below).

Spatial analysis capabilities

HARVEST can conduct several analyses of the spatial pattern of the landscape both before and after simulated harvest. The patch structure (patches defined by stand age or forest type) can be analyzed for the entire mapped area or by individual management areas. The amount of forest interior and edge habitat can be calculated and displayed according to the definition of interior given by the user. Version 6.1 adds calculation of the fragmentation index GISfrag (Ripple et al. 1991). Analysis results of simulations can be saved spatially as GIS maps and in tabular form as a text file. An option to submit internal and saved maps to the landscape pattern analysis program APACK (Mladenoff and DeZonia 2004) is now provided.

Abilities to address interdisciplinary, multi-scaled, and political issues

Cross-disciplinary evaluation: Economic & social constraints can be used in Spectrum, and resulting output run through Harvest.

Facilitates social negotiation / learning: Harvest's map-based outputs are likely to be more understandable to a general audience than tabular summaries of forest structures.

System

System requirements

Operating systems: Windows2000, WindowsXP

Other software needed: Input files must be in an Erdas v7.4+, 8- or 16-bit GIS file format; many common GIS programs can export this format.

Development status: Regularly distributed

Architecture and major DSS components

[Describe the basic architecture of the system in software and hardware. Desktop client-server, web based, as well as the integration with available systems. Basic data flow, focusing on retrieval of required input and propagation and implementations of decisions. Mention its modular and scalability capabilities.]

Usage

[Describe the level of use: Research level use, Industry use, Government use.]

Computational limitations

[Describe the system limitations: e.g. number of management units, number of vehicles, time horizon.]

• 64 535 stands
• 32 767 each management areas & forest types

User interface

User interface quality: Includes a Windows GUI

Complexity of system / user interface: Relatively low, can be up and running in a few hours.

Documentation and support

Documentation: Manual included with download.

Support: Contact developer by e-mail.

Training: Sample dataset available on website. Occaisional workshops.

Installation

Prerequisite knowledge needed: Understanding of forest management terminology.

Cost: Free

Demo:

References

External resources

Website: http://nrs.fs.fed.us/tools/harvest/

Publications: Available on website