View source for United States-The forest plan revision process in the Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest

{{Case
|Has flag=green
|Has full name=The forest plan revision process in the Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest
|Has country=United States
|Has location=Pacific Northwest region
|Has responsible organisation=US Department of Agriculture - Forest Service
|Has type of owner organization=national administration
|Has related DSS=VDDT-Path
|Has start date=2003
|Has end date=2014
|Has DSS development stage=use
|Has decision stage=intelligence, design, choice
|Has temporal scale=Long term (strategic)
|Has spatial context=Non spatial
|Has spatial scale=Regional/national level
|Has decision making dimension=More than one decision maker/stakeholder
|Has objectives dimension=Multiple objectives
|Has goods and services dimension=Market wood products, Non-market services
|Has working group theme=Knowledge management
|Has website=http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/okawen/landmanagement/planning/?cid=fsbdev3_053653
|Has description=The establishment of national forests in United States (US) was begun in 1891 through the American Land Revision Act. The US Forest Service was established in 1905 and took over management of what has become known as the National Forest System (NFS). The NFS is the whole of the forest and woodland areas owned by the federal government and managed by the United States (US) Forest Service. Today in the United States there are 155 National Forests, and 16 National Forests are included in the Pacific Northwest region of the USDA Forest Service. The management of National Forests in United States is guided by (USDA Forest Service PNWR, 2011): strategic goals of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and USDA Forest Service (restore, sustain, and enhance the nation's forests and grassland; sustain and enhance outdoor recreation opportunities; provide science-based applications and tools for sustainable natural resources, etc.); laws (Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act -RPA- issued in 1974; National Forest Management Act -NFMA- issued in 1976; National Environmental Policy Act issued in 1979); regulations (first planning regulations for NFMA in 1979, revision of NFMA planning regulations in 1982 and 2012); agency policies. Each national forest is required to have a strategic plan (“national forest plan”, NFP) and to update this plan every 15 years.

The original planning efforts - in the 1980s and early 1990s - of the Pacific Northwest region of the US Forest Service aimed to meet goals and objectives to optimize or maximize net public benefit from various forests outputs and for this reason the first round of forest plans were developed using decision support tools working in a deterministic way using a linear programming approach (FORPLAN DSS, later Spectrum) to choose the best mix of management options with the goals of meeting specific objectives (Shlisky and Vandendriesche, in press).

Since the 1990s the objectives of the forest management planning have changed because of a shift in social values from timber production to recreation conservation and restoration. These changes led to a change in the approach of the analysis, which has moved to a stochastic simulation approach using the VDDT DSS (Vegetation Dynamic Development Tool, ESSA 2007) (Shlisky, personal communication). VDDT is based on a state-transition model approach to simulating vegetation succession. “States” describe various stages of forest vegetation composition and structure, while the “transitions” describe the probabilities of various natural and anthropic disturbance agents (i.e. fire, insect, fungus, mammals, climate, etc.) and management interventions (i.e. tree harvests, thinning, etc.) to move from one state to another. These probabilities are assigned by the forest manager (or more in general by the users) based on expert knowledge, although work is now being done to validate the probabilities using the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS), a more detailed individual tree level stand simulator based on empirical data. Different scenarios can be run using different probabilities to see the effects of alternative management strategies or assumptions about the prevalence of natural disturbances.

The latest NFP revision for the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest (Washington State) began in 2003. Numerous delays were encountered as new national planning rules were issued but subsequently invalidated through legal challenges in the courts. Planning is done by an interdisciplinary team (ID team) of specialists from the national forest staff, under the supervision of the forest supervisor and with additional technical support and oversight from the regional office. In particular, the regional analyst has provided technical support to the ID team silviculturalist in the use of the VDDT DSS.

As a starting point, the planning effort used a consistent set of VDDT models that were developed for the larger region by a cooperative project between the USFS research branch and local universities (the Integrated Landscape Assessment Project (ILAP, http://http://oregonstate.edu/inr/ilap). One of the ILAP modelers worked with the silviculturalist for XX time to help get him familiar with the process (since he was not an experienced VDDT modeler. The silviculturalist and regional analyst have further refined the ILAP models to better reflect local conditions. This ability for local adjustments was key for establishing the credibility of the models.

The modeling application, running at landscape level, For forest planning purposes, forest managers of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest (Washington State) used different models built by the VDDT for a primary landscape level vegetation analysis. In particular they used the timber volume models to analyze relationship between timber volume quantity representing by any of the seven structural/process classes defined by Hessburg et al. (2000). They also used the models to analyze the long term sustained yield and to evaluate the cost variation of different silvicultural treatments.

As of July 2012, the planning and modeling process is still ongoing. A draft plan is expected in early 2013 and a final plan in 2014.
|Has reference=ESSA Technologies Ltd. 2007. Vegetation Dynamics Development Tool User Guide, Version 6.0. Prepared by ESSA Technologies Ltd., Vancouver, BC. http://essa.com/tools/vddt/

Hessburg, P.F.; Smith, B.G.; Salter, R.B.; Ottmar, R.D.; Alvarado, E. 2000. Recent changes (1930s-1990s) in spatial patterns of interior northwest forests, USA. Forest Ecology and Management 136: 53–83.

Shlisky A., Vandendriesche D., in press. Use of state-and-transition simulation modeling in National Forest planning in the Pacific Northwest, USA.
USDA Forest Service PNWR, 2011. Determining lands suitable for timber production, and long term sustained yield, allowable sale quantity and harvest volume estimates for forest plan revision under provision of the 1982 rule. Unpublished document. Pacific Northwest Region. March 13, 2011.
|Has wiki contact person=Chiara Torresan
|Has wiki contact e-mail=chiara.torresan@entecra.it
|Has DSS development=United States-The forest plan revision process in the Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest.Description of DSS development
|Has decision support techniques=United States-The forest plan revision process in the Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest.Decision support techniques
|Has knowledge management processes=United States-The forest plan revision process in the Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest.Knowledge management process
|Has support for social participation=United States-The forest plan revision process in the Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest.Support of social participation
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