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ForestGales +	ForestGALES allows the analysis of wind climate effects on the stability of a conifer forest. The tool can be used to assess risk over time via predicted growth from yield tables or alternatively current risk from mensuration data (top height and dbh). It evaluates the wind hazard of a conifer stand plantation, based on some of the stand feature, like soil, cultivation, drainage, location, or metric measures (top height, average dbh) of the existing species. It provides information as the return period for that damage to occur, risk status and critical wind speed for both overturning and stem breakage risk. It allows to quantify the wind hazard existing in actual stands or, with the help of growth prediction models or yield tables, the future risk of wind damage assumed by current decisions on the establishment of new plantations, drainage improvements, thinning options, clear-cutting impact, rotation periods or the creation of retentions. ForestGALES can be used to calculate the risk for a particular stand in the single stand mode, or in the batch or multiple stand mode, for a number of stands one after another. Within these two modes there are three ways of making predictions: using field measurements, using stand characteristics provided by a yield model, or making predictions through time, calculating the risk of damage over a typical rotation from stand characteristics contained in yield models. Recently adapted as part of Stormrisk project to allow model to run in partner countries.  +
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Germany-Actor Network Theory to Understand Collaborative Decision Support Systems Development in Forest Management Practice +	Commonly use of Decision Support Systems is considered as a technology adoption process. However, a lot of implicit requirements are embedded in these complex tools to make them successful or fail in decision processes. Therefore it would be better to consider them as products of networks of people, other products, rules, regulations, policies, institutions, etc. Consequently developers are not only supposed to look at the output that is desired, but also at the embedding in these networks. They would thus look into the institutionalization of the decision support technology in decision and administrative processes. At the same time, they would also look into the drift of existing institutionalized methods, tools and approaches, that could move out of a network. In this case study we use Actor Network Theory (ANT), that has been developed to understand the interaction between technology and society, to understand how DSS development could change if we would not only consider the output of a DSS. Actor Network Theory is thus an alternative framework to identify and examine the extended collection of actors and interactions associated with a collaborative DSS development process.The case study thus aimed at addressing the third FORSYS objective (i.e. to evaluate the requirements put on the development process and design of forest DSSs by the problem specific context. A typical ANT analysis would consist of rich (not necessarily long!) account that gives "figuration" to actors (human and non-human) and what they make other actors do (their agency). The account categorizes actors as those that are unpredictable (mediators) and those that in predictable way transport meaning (intermediaries). Also it acknowledges actors that are "obligatory points of passage", "centres of calculation" and "boundary objects". It provides a systematic way or thinking to trace agency through a network of associations by focusing on oligoptica (although strictly not correct, let's call it a sub-network) that together form a panorama of the network. In doing so the account provides the means to describe and understand the stability of networks. The central question of this case study concerned the way according to which forest DSS get institutionalized in forestry practice, in particular in the German state of Rheinland Pfalz, by means of a project called ReFoRP. In the ReFoRP project there is an ongoing forest planning process that has a high degree of predictability but, since new technologies and tools (web-based collaborative Decision Support System, ILWIS, Community Viz, touch tables) are being introduced in the current planning practice, as well as results of studies on climate change, it is particularly interesting to study the consequences of this innovation. The most important results of the case study consist in: (i) the study of the Actor Network Theory (Latour, 2005) and in the subsequent organization of its key concepts into a table with definitions and examples of the fundamental concepts; (ii) the systematization of the information concerning the planning and decision-making process in the ReFoRP project until February 2013. We thus developed a sort of meta study of the process by identifying the actors involved and the relations among them. This “panorama” has been shown to the experts from the different sections in the Ministry who have contacts with external agencies and organizations during the meeting that was held on the 19th of July in Koblenz. This lead to an understanding of the gaps existing in the embedding of the DSS into the process and to the formalization of this into a comprehensive diagram in October of 2012. It outlined how results from two different climate change projects (i.e. impact assessment of climate change on various tree species and web-based spatial evaluation software) are to be integrated and by whom. There are still considerable steps to be made towards the actual use of these products, but dynamics of institutionaliztion and drift are being captured.  +
Germany-Using GISCAME to test alternative land-use scenarios under climate change in the Upper Elbe Valley +	In the study region Upper Elbe Valley - Eastern Ore mountains GISCAME was adapted and is now being used to test alternative land-use scenarios with regard to their impact on ecosystem services provision under alternative climate change scenarios.  +
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HARVEST +	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.  +
Heureka +	Heureka is a system for long and medium term forestry planning and scenario analysis. It consists of several applications: (1) StandWise for stand-level management analysis, (2) PlanWise for forest-level planning, (3) RegWise for regional scenario analysis, (4) PlanEval for multi-criteria deciion analysis to rank plans created in PlanWise and RegWise with one pr more stakeholders, and (5) Habitat Prognosis, a AcGIS-abased application for habitat suitability analysis of a given plan. The system covers the whole decision support process from data inventory to tools for selecting among plan alternatives with multi-criteria decision making techniques. The system is designed for both large-scale and small-scale forestry. The utilities handled today are timber and bio-fuel production, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and recreation.  +
HylobiusManagementSupportSystem +	A decision support system for managing plantation establishment in the context of Hylobius abietis (Pine Weevil) threats. The system allows the user to plan a site monitoring exercise to determine insect density and examine management/control options to minimise transplant losses.  +
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Ireland-PractiSFM multi-resource inventory and decision support for private forest owners +	Irish forest managers, faced with the task to implement Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) principles while at the same time satisfying the forest owner’s goals and objectives, require effective and efficient multi-resource survey and decision support tools in order to produce management plans that are realistic, practical and sustainable. The PractiSFM (Practical Sustainable Forest Management) research project was an attempt to address these needs. The PractiSFM DSS was developed in incremental stages within Microsoft Excel using the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) integrated development environment (IDE). VBA offers the advantages of fast performance, tight integration with the host application, and the ability to build solutions without the use of additional programming tools. Microsoft Excel’s familiarity to the end user group, its widespread availability, its user-friendliness and its relatively low cost compared to other proprietary systems were also considered advantages. The PractiSFM DSS comprises three main modules which control the functionality of the application. This functionality includes production of inventory data entry forms, validation of inventory data, production of stand timber and non-timber forecasts, generation of reports and control of interactive mapping and goal analysis functions. Data requirements for the program are provided in the form of keyboard input through forms and dialogs, and data in lookup tables. The first component of the PractiSFM System comprises a multi-resource forest inventory protocol, consisting of a standardised set of protocols for observing, assessing and recording multi-resource forest inventory data at the stand-level scale, which has been developed in accordance with the criteria and indicators as identified in the Irish National Forest Standard. In the second component, the PractiSFM option generation module, the harvest simulation or timber forecasting tools (Fig. 1) are based on the British Forestry Commission Yield Class system and the Irish Dynamic Yield models developed for Sitka spruce, Douglas fir and Norway spruce. Estimated thinning and clearfelled timber harvest volumes associated with particular silvicultural treatments may also be entered manually into the DSS, in cases where Irish forest growth projection models have yet to be developed (e.g. for continuous cover systems and for broadleaf species). The option generation module is used to create an option matrix, which represents a series of 10-year harvest scheduling and replanting treatments for each stand in the forest. The option generation module incorporates interactive dialogs and uses stand stocking, basal area, yield class, average growing stock, user defined thinning parameters and other calculated stand summary statistics as inputs to guide the creation of realistic stand management option sets. Non-timber data for each option is also included in the option matrix. The third component of PractiSFM is a planning module for simulation of forest conditions over a 10-year planning period. The component provides an interactive map, visual tools and graphic and tabular reports that can be used to analyse the effects of different management scenarios over the 10-year planning period. The module can be used to generate planning scenario information at a forest and stand level, such as timber volume/value assortments, area of visually or environmentally sensitive forest, area affected by harvesting operations, changes in deer cover and food habitat, cumulative deadwood volumes, productive man hours and operational cash flow. The outputs from the PractiSFM system have the additional potential to facilitate the standardisation of management plan reporting and feed into the national forest information system. The combination of the developed PractiSFM multi-resource inventory protocol and software has proven to be flexible in dealing with a range of forest characteristics and owner’s objectives. The system was developed with continuous input from undergraduate and post-graduate students who used the prototype systems during management planning projects, and in close cooperation with a forest management consultancy company. At a later stage, two other management companies became involved as field testers and they provided feedback on the usefulness and user-friendliness of the system. The system is currently being used by the management company involved in the project and by the university.  +
Italy-A comprehensive system for forest management planning in Trentino Province +	Forest administration of the Province of Trento (North-Eastern Italian Alps, 400,000 ha of forest area, more than 50% of the province total area) has recently changed its inventory system from total census (full callipering, which had been progressively reduced in area, for cost reasons) to sampling methods. Besides, the needs for a modern and efficient forest management require more information about an overall description of the forest, but at the same time can tolerate less accuracy in timber production estimates. The new management system integrates statistical and sampling methods with computer and technological resources allowing an effective georeferenced description of the main (both dendroauxometric and structural) forest parameters of the managed forest stands. SIPAFIT is the DSS used in forest planning by the Trentino Forest Service which allows simulation of different scenarios in terms of forest stratification, inventory strategies and sampling intensity. SIPAFIT has been articulated in several sub-systems which support the different steps of the management decision chain (refer to the Wiki description for details). SIPAFIT and its sub-systems were initially tested on a pilot management plan in 2009, and then had several changes and improvements to tackle the problems met. A total of 12 experts were involved in system design, implementation and testing (5 researchers, 4 foresters from the Forest Service and 3 professional forest managers involved in plan preparation). The professionals involved in the development of the system sometimes had specific and little transversal skills. Moreover, during this first period of application, a number of meetings and workshops has been realized with all the users of the system. The tools have been operatively used since 2009 by the forest managers of Forest Service in the Trentino Province, and therefore their users have extended from researchers to consultants (professionals who perform forest management plans) and to other stakeholders (i.e. managers and technicians of the municipalities which are the public forest owners). Of course, there is still few information about the maintainance of SIPAFIT: the system is too young.  +
Italy-Analysis of logging residues chain for a sustainable bioenergy production in Alta Val di Non +	A reliable evaluation of biomass availability for renewable energy production purposes must take into account the local forest resources management and the ability to reach forest areas, which is related to the existing road network, and to the characteristics and morphology of the terrain. In Alta Valle di Non there are a number of sawmills which produce logging residues, and some co-generation heating plants. Main purpose of this case study was to get information for optimizing the characteristics (number, size and location) of the existing and even new heating plants. The main software used was BIOMASFOR (Zambelli et al. 2012), that is a GIS decision support tool which runs under GRASS-GIS software. Biomasfor estimates forest biomass availability for energy production, at the same time supporting management decisions, combining the morphological features of the mountain landscape with the current capabilities of forest technology. It performs a multistep analysis considering ecological, technical and economic issues. Ecological and technical information is obtained from forest management plans and from terrain models. Besides Biomasfor data, other economic features were obtained by a questionnaire sent to harvesting enterprises, sawmills and the municipality administrations. The outcome of the evaluation process have already been reported to the stakeholders, in particular to the mayors of the municipalities interested, in a public meeting.  +
Italy-Assessing forest functions at stand scale in a sub-regional forest plan in the Dolomites +	FORFUN was applied to a landscape scale forest plan on a territory of seven municipalities in the southern part of the Italian Dolomites, covering 32,300 ha. The use of FORFUN made possible the comparison of two scenarios, in turn not taking/taking into account the stakeholders' opinion on forest functions ranking. The two scenarios were presented to the stakeholders in a series of public meetings. Scenario A was completely rejected by the participants as it excluded the possibility of forest harvesting on half of the forest area including some compartments of high productive value. The reduction of the area with prevailing wild life conservation function as a result of the introduction of the weights from the questionnaire (Scenario B) made possible to start a discussion that led to the acceptance of such a scenario as a basis for planning. The agreement called for a clarification of some concepts about which there were significant misunderstandings and preconceptions: a) Prevailing function in a context of multifunctional management does not mean exclusive function. b) Conservation of nature is a concept clearly different from conservation of the landscape although there are some points of overlap. That distinction was not clear to many stakeholders that felt both concepts would lead to the same conclusions: heavy restrictions on the use of forests. c) The conservation of cultural landscape is the common goal for the management of protected areas and Natura 2000 sites. The expansion of forest on abandoned crops and pastures as well as the increase in stand density and growing stock created problems for the conservation of some habitats, causing the loss of grassland patches interspersed with wooded areas, the closure of clearings within stands critical for reproduction of endangered bird species (e.g. Tetrao urogallus L.), loss of stand structure diversity. Tackling this situation will require capillaries, continuous and cautious silvicultural treatments rather than their prohibition. The real conflict is between productive and protective function: 68% of woodland with a prevailing productive function has the direct protective functions as second in the ranking and the opposite is true for 45% of forest area with prevailing protective function. In about 5000 ha the scores of the two functions are practically identical.  +
Italy-ProgettoBosco a data-driven DSS for forest planning: an application in Abruzzo Region +	ProgettoBosco-Assestamento is an Italian data-driven dss for forest planning at ownership level . At the end of ’90s, 15 (out of 20) Italian Regions decided to share their expertise related to forest planning in order to find common solutions; the overall idea was “we have similar problems but different approaches and different languages so we could join us to search common solutions”. Based on these premises, a research project was funded by Ministry of agriculture and forests (RiSelvItalia Project 2001-2007). The research project based upon an iterative participated process was the way to develop ProgettoBosco. Along ten years, more than 150 scientists and experts (among researchers, forest managers, regional public servants belonging to Regional Forest Services - directly involved in the experimental definition of the system - and professionals in charge of drawing up the experimental plans) have been taking part in the research project joining a “collaborative learning method”. First step was to define an ontology related to forest planning and management (a common language) then the dss structure (and software) was defined and tested (more than 250 management plans at ownership level, covering about 200.000 ha of managed forest areas located in twelve Italian Regions).  +
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KUBIK +	KUBIK allow the user to simulate effects of different assortment distributions.  +
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LEaRNForME +	LEaRNForME is an instrument for the land planning able to recognise the role of the vegetation cover in controlling some hydro geological instability phenomena. This evaluation will give the opportunity to introduce environmental issues into forest planning.  +
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MAPSS +	MAPSS (Mapped Atmosphere-Plant-Soil System) is a landscape- to global-scale vegetation distribution model that was developed to simulate the potential biosphere impacts and biosphere-atmosphere feedbacks from climatic change.  +
MELA +	MELA is an operational decision support system developed and maintained by Metla (Finnish Forest Research Institute) based on its forest research. This system has been used since the 1980s in the analyses of wood production possibilities and the impact of different harvest levels at national and regional scale in Finnlan  +
MONTE +	MONTE has been applied to several regions in Spain such as Catalonia, Castilla-León and Aragón. If reliable data (digital terrain model, digital maps, forest inventory, etc.) and models (growth and yield models, volume functions, etc.) are available the system can be applied to any other region in Spain or in another country. Support for specific issues Harvest scheduling, timber production, yield prediction, non-wood forest productions, recreation facilities, biodiversity conservation, and landscape quality. Support for specific thematic areas of a problem type Silvicultural Certification Conservation Development choices / land use zoning Policy/intervention alternatives  +
MatrixGen +	A set of MS Excel macros developed to generate linear programming type I formulations of the forest planning problem in natural format (mathematical expressions) ready to be solved by LP solvers.  +
Mesta +	An internet-based decision-support application for (participatory) maker strategic-level natural resources discrete choice situations.  +
Monsu +	Monsu is a calculation and planning software that was developed in Finland in order to be used within multiple-use forestry. It covers scheduling plans generation, numerical optimization and results graphical visualization.  +
MyTestDSS +	Test description  +
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NED +	NED is a set of computer-based tools for forest ecosystem management designed to allow the analysis of the trade-offs required when managing for multiple benefits. NED was originally an acronym for the northeast decision model; however, since 1995 when development was expanded to include other regions of North America, the reference to the northeastern United States was dropped, and the name is now simply NED.  +
New Zealand-Modular Forest Management DSS in NZ +	A stand modelling system “STANDPAK” has been used by the New Zealand forest industry over two decades (1988 – 2008). It was developed and supported by researchers at Scion (New Zealand Forest Research Institute Ltd) and has been through the full cycle of development, use and redundancy. It is to be replaced by a new generation DSS called Forecaster. The STANDPAK system was empirical, modular and deterministic. It primarily provided a mechanism for the integration of numerous research results and gave managers and investors a method of objectively evaluating alternative management regimes for plantations of radiata pine. The system was deployed on early personal computers as a DOS application, ie was not adapted to run as a WINDOWS application. STANDPAK predicted the growth of stands (allowing for the effects of site, genetic improvement and stand management), calculates diameter distributions at harvest and produces stand volumes by log size and quality. Potential sawlog values may then be predicted under a range of processing and pricing scenarios. The effects of trees on pasture and hence livestock production in agroforestry situations was also predicted. A second phase of development has been in the area of wood quality and carbon sequestration. The ability to predict the quantity of juvenile wood and number of rings per log have been added to assist with concerns of wood quality associated with shorter rotations. A algorithm has been added that predicts the allocation of stand biomass to roots, stems, branchs, and needles, this allows the calculation of the amount of carbon sequestered as the stand grows while accounting for the impact pruning, thinning, mortality, harvesting and decay of tree components.  +
NorFor +	NorFor is a spatial, partial equilibrium model of the Norwegian forest sector based on the assumption of perfect competition and perfect foresight. Maiximising NPV of the annual net social payoff, the model determines optimal behavior in forestry and forest industry as well as consumers.  +
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OSMOSE +	OSMOSE stands for a conceptual generator of specific decision support systems (DSS) for spatial allocation of land use types. The DSS to be generated by OSMOSE are meant to (i) identify land units which meet multiple predefined attribute values for a specific land use type (LUT) and (ii) rank land units for a given LUT according to these multiple attributes. A complementary purpose is to identify and rank LUTs for a given land unit. The proposed framework is extremely flexible as it can accommodate continuous and ordinal, differentially weighted attributes (with unequal number of classes), alternative land unit definitions, land use types and climate change scenarios. The OSMOSE-framework is designed to address four types of specific questions concerning land use planning: 1. What is the performance of a considered land unit under the current land use type ? This ‘What?’ question inquires, for the selected land units, the value of one or more specific attributes for the current (ini  +
OffREval +	Trafficability is the capacity of the vehicle to operate in specific terrain conditions. It depends on vehicle configuration, soil properties and slope gradient. The purpose of the trafficability evaluation system is to predict trafficability spatially-explicitly for a given terrain unit for a specific harvesting vehicle. The system consists of three components: first, the spatial database with a digital terrain model and a forest stand map; second, a model base, consisting of mobility models, a soil moisture model, and soil bearing capacity model; third, a user interface to specify the system parameters and to visualize output.  +

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