Scenario Investment Planning Platform

Prioritizing investments in forest and fuel management projects and measuring outcomes is a significant challenge for large, decentralized agencies like the USDA Forest Service. Over the past decade, numerous assessments of land conditions in terms of fuels, fire risk, watershed health, and terrestrial conditions have been completed. However, models or tools to integrate these assessments into prioritization strategies and measure outcomes do not exist. The need for prioritization tools continues to grow as the agency is increasingly challenged to meet management targets while producing a wide range of ecosystem services, in coordination with partner agencies as specified in Shared Stewardship agreements.

The USDA Forest Service Scenario Investment Planning Platform was developed by Forest Service Research & Development to help the agency modernize its approach to prioritizing land management investments. This system can model spatially explicit management scenarios across scales ranging from projects, forests, regions, states, and nationwide. The framework can be coupled with other models and management assessments and applied to a wide range of scenarios. The core of the scenario platform is the ForSys model, a versatile planning model that evolved over a decade of research on operational forest and fuel management problems at the Rocky Mountain Research Station.

For more information, case studies, and publications, see the Scenario Investment Planning Platform StoryMap here.

The USDA Forest Service Scenario Investment Planning Platform was developed by Forest Service Research & Development to help the agency modernize its approach to prioritizing land management investments. This website describes the system and its application for modeling spatially explicit management scenarios across scales ranging from projects, forests, regions, states, and nationwide. The framework can be coupled with other models and management assessments and applied to a wide range of scenarios. Example case studies where scenario planning and associated tools have been deployed are described below.

The core of the scenario platform is the ForSys model, a versatile planning model that evolved over a decade of research on operational forest and fuel management problems at the Rocky Mountain Research Station.

Context for scenario planning

Prioritizing investments in forest and fuel management projects and measuring outcomes is a significant challenge for large, decentralized agencies like the Forest Service.

Over the past decade, numerous assessments of land conditions in terms of fuels, fire risk, watershed health, and terrestrial conditions have been completed. However, models or tools to integrate these assessments into prioritization strategies and measure outcomes do not exist.

The need for prioritization tools continues to grow as the agency is increasingly challenged to meet management targets while producing a wide range of ecosystem services, in coordination with partner agencies as specified in Shared Stewardship agreements.

Beyond using this system to examine agency priorities, scenario planning can be used to identify cross-boundary opportunities and prioritize activities to expand the scale of land treatments with stakeholders.

Application and case studies

Map of western U.S. with areas highlighted showing project locations 
The latest project completed by the SIPP team was the development of a plan to reduce wildfire risk to communities over the next decade. This effort used the national fireshed map developed by the SIPP team for continental-scale scenario modeling that identified planning areas and stands to treat. The Forest Service is now examining how the priorities developed from national scale data and modeling compare to current regional and forest scale on the ground projects and plans.

Scenario planning has been applied in support of land management agencies in their development of forest management plans and fire and fuels management operations at a range of landscape scales. A number of these are described in the publications listed on the Research & Publications StoryMap page. The assessments completed for these scenarios include tradeoff analysis and predicted outcomes for a wide range of issues including wildfire risk, economics, water resources, biodiversity, carbon, and other attributes describing land conditions and management objectives. SIPP has or is being used to support the following land management planning efforts:

• Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman National Forest 5-year vegetation action plans. 
• Stanislaus National Forest SERAL project prioritization for WUI risk, forest resilience, and spotted owl habitat.
• New Mexico State Forest Action Plan priority map.
• Washington State DNR prioritization of fuels treatments in response to House Bill 1784.
• Agency response to Executive Order 13855 Promoting Active Management of America's Forests, Rangelands, and Other Federal Lands to Improve Conditions and Reduce Wildfire Risk.
• FY19-21 national hazardous fuels budget allocation.
• Four Forest Restoration Initiative prioritization of project areas.
• Tahoe Central Sierra Initiative.

The ForSys scenario planning model

The Scenario Planning Platform uses the ForSys model as the core analytical engine. ForSys is used to simulate and optimize management activities and examine outcomes. The model evolved from an earlier system, the landscape treatment designer. The ForSys model provides planners with a wide range of analytical capability including:

• Spatial optimization of projects and treatments
• Simulation of 5-10 year action plans
• Tradeoff analysis to understand the opportunity cost of specific priorities
• Replication of forest plan constraints and management intent
• Assessment of the effect of future wildfire uncertainty on forests

The ForSys model inputs GIS data on land conditions and assessments along with treatment thresholds and constraints that dictate where and what management activities are suitable for specific stands in a study area. Scenarios are simulated by weighting the relative importance of the different assessments for the allocation of treatments. Thousands of scenarios can be run in a single execution to examine alternative weighting schemes and quantify tradeoffs. Outputs include maps of priority project areas, and production graphs illustrating tradeoffs and outcomes from management activities.

The model is implemented in three different versions: (1) Windows desktop, (2) an R package and (3) a Shiny R app that is hosted in the cloud and accessed with a web browser. Using the model to simulate management scenarios requires basic knowledge of GIS, forest planning, and operations research.

The model and tutorial are available from the authors on a case-by-case basis. Potential users can contact the SIPP team to discuss how they envision using the model and the specific land management problem of interest. The team will work with potential users to ensure that the problem at hand is an appropriate application of the model.

Scenario planning links to the Fireshed Registry

The Fireshed Registry was built as a data warehouse for the scenario planning model and stores data for simulating specific investment scenarios related to reducing wildfire risk to communities.

The Registry also provides a geospatial dashboard to allow managers and specialists to view and map a vast array of data related to wildfire transmission, past and planned management, and past and predicted wildfires. The all lands geography of the Fireshed Registry makes it a useful platform for shared stewardship as well.

Work is in progress to make the Fireshed Registry publicly available; in the meantime, contact the SIPP Team for access.

Frequently Asked Questions

Find the answers to common questions here.