ForSys - Scenario planning model for multi-objective restoration and fuel management planning

The speed, simplicity, and flexibility of the ForSys model allows users to explore hundreds of scenarios to fully investigate the tradeoffs inherent in land management decisions, rather than finding one optimal solution. The program evolved from the Landscape Treatment Designer used in prior studies. The program has been used in several research and applied case studies at a range of scales (projects, forests, states, continental United States) to prioritize projects and stand treatments (see case studies). ForSys is available in a windows desktop (ForSysX) and R version (ForSysR). View a simple demonstration of the ForSys scenario planning tool.  

To learn more, view case studies, download ForSys and get started, visit the ForSys Research Consortium website. 

ForSys Fact Sheet  Download ForSys

ForSys was developed as an operations research tool to explore a wide range of forest landscape prioritization problems on western U.S. national forests. The early goal of the work was to improve ad hoc methods used by forests to prioritize projects and design landscape treatments to address the backlog of restoration needs. Over its evolution, ForSys has provided several key functionalities that were not available to field units, including spatial optimization algorithms that could be used to generate large numbers of scenarios and analyze tradeoffs among competing restoration goals. The ForSys program can replicate almost any spatial treatment pattern, including treating stands to optimize fire resilient containers (Ager et al. 2013), fuel break networks (Ager et al. 2023) or various mixtures and variants (see figure below), including breaking up homogeneous fuelbeds. Treatments can be any management activity, including prescribed fire, thinning, habitat enhancement, streamside restoration, etc.; however, the program does not have embedded response functions – the response to management actions must be included in the input database. For instance, in an economic application, the predicted net revenue is calculated outside of ForSys and presented as choices to the model as part of a scenario that includes objectives, constraints, and treatment thresholds.

The image below shows the types of treatment patterns that can be replicated with ForSys. Note that ForSys is not able to optimize treatments using the TOM model in FlamMap. Black shaded areas in the maps depict fuel treatment areas within the example landscape. (A) Low hazard fire containers for dry forest restoration, (B) protection of dispersed values where treatments are arranged to maximize the reduction in spread rate, (C) defensible fuel breaks around a wildland urban interface (WUI), (D) defensible fuel breaks around dispersed values (e.g., critical wildlife habitat), (E) restoration of natural fire barriers (e.g., hardwood forest in a conifer matrix), and (F) high hazard fire containers surrounded by networks of defensible fuel breaks. Figure from Ager et al. (2013).

ForSys is used for short range tactical planning problems where invariant landscape conditions can be assumed, i.e., fire and forest succession are not going to significantly affect the outcome of the model run compared to prescribed management. ForSys is designed around the concept that restoration and risk reduction activities occur at the stand polygon scale (1–20 ha; 2.5–50 acres) and need to be organized into project areas (5,000–25,000 acres) to achieve landscape scale management goals and meet logistical and administrative constraints.

The difference between ForSys and fuel management planning systems like ArcFuels and IFTDSS is that landscape response to treatments does not typically involve re-running burn probability or risk analysis (although ForSys With Fire is a new R package that incorporates ForSys outputs into FlamMap or FConstMTT). Substantial research has shown the need to treat 30-50% of typical fire excluded landscapes to significantly change fire behavior – assuming anything beyond that from additional modeling under current non-stationary fire regimes is not worth the effort from a broadscale scenario planning standpoint. ForSys was built to analyze higher order constraints and inefficiencies in current restoration and fuel management programs at a range of scales. For instance, how should planning areas be sequenced on national forests, and how do economic constraints affect progress towards restoration?  

Key Features

• ForSys has four spatial modes for solving prioritization problems: (1) stands are selected to optimize one or more objectives within a predefined planning area; (2) stands are aggregated to create planning areas that optimize one or more objectives; (3) stands are maximally dispersed from a project centroid considering one or more objectives and distance from the centroid; and (4) project areas are maximally dispersed within a larger landscape considering both distance from other projects and one or more objectives. 
• Weighted objective functions can blend up to five objectives to build scenarios that allocate investments to multiple values of interest. An iteration feature automates the analyses of different weight combinations to create production frontiers describing tradeoffs.
• The hierarchical constraint system allocates activities to predefined levels (e.g., area treated) among up to three levels of administrative subunits (e.g., national forests, districts, projects). Constraints can be subunit specific.
• The constraint iteration feature allows for looping through different constraint floors and ceilings for analyzing the marginal utility of relaxing constraints.
• Zone feature (a.k.a., ForSys with Zones) partitions study areas to allow modeling different constraints, objective packages, and treatment thresholds on landscape subunits. This feature provides the functionality to model the standards and guidelines in typical forest plans where management emphases associated with different land allocations require different constraints.
• Shapefile, CSV, and jpg outputs.
• Save feature writes run parameters to file for future loading. File pathways can be edited within a text editor when sharing setup files across users.
• Archival system saves both input data and run parameters in a zipfile package. The ltd file, on the other hand, will contain the input shapefile (*.shp), adjacency file (*.csv), and prioritization parameters or settings (*.xml file) and does not require edits to open and run. All these data are decompressed into a user-defined folder location when opening the archival package.

Add-on Processors

• The ForSysWithFire R package incorporates ForSys outputs in fire simulations. The package starts by using the areas identified for treatment by ForSys to change the landscape, reflecting landscape restoration treatments. Then, the user can specify fires to be run. These fires will be used to characterize the performance of the treatments. Current fire simulations supported are FlamMap and FConstMTT.
• The ForSysXR R package improves planning efficiency by automating maps and generating reports with standard ForSys outputs in the R environment, and incorporates ForSys into existing analysis workflows allowing spatial dataset creation and modification to feed directly into ForSysX.
• ForSysX LCP builder creates no action and treatments LCP files for each defined planning area.
• Excel graphics post processor creates attainment graphs and tradeoff curves from CSV outputs.

ForSysX User Interface with a Sample Problem Run

ForSys Example Workflow and Outputs