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The USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program has been in continuous operation for over 70 years. FIA’s primary objective is to determine the extent, condition, volume, growth, and depletion of timber on the Nation’s forest land. To accomplish this objective, FIA collects sample plot information on all ownerships across the United States.The Forest Inventory and Analysis Database (FIADB) (Miles and others 2001), was developed to provide users with a nationally consistent format for FIA data. FIADB files can be obtained for any State inventory conducted after 1988 for...

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources is leading a government-industry partnership to develop an Ontario variant of the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS). Based on the Lake States variant and the PrognosisBC user-interface, the FVSOntarioproject is motivated by a need to model the impacts of intensive forest management strategies and the multiple ecological and social objectives faced by today’s resource managers. Currently, the large tree diameter model and the small tree height model of the Lake States variant have been replaced with localized equations from data sets from the Great...

The 1908 founding of the first American forest experiment station in Fort Valley, Arizona was an event of considerable historical significance. The Fort Valley station was the linchpin of forester Raphael Zon’s bold plan to create the first program of organized research in US Forest Service history. It also represented the beginning of a fruitful marriage between German and American methods of forestry. This project traces the history of government-run experiment stations from its roots in Vienna, Austria, in the 1870s, through the work of German-American forester Bernhard Fernow and...

Disturbances generated by forest restoration treatments have the potential for enhancing the establishment of nonnative species thereby impeding long-term native plant recovery. In a ponderosa pine forest next to the Fort Valley Experimental Forest, Arizona, we examined the establishment of nonnative species after three alternative treatments with different intensities of tree thinning, coupled with prescribed burning and an untreated control, in relation to total species abundance and richness. Pretreatment data were collected in 1998 and postreatment responses were measured from 2001...

As the number of state and regional climate change agreements grows, so does the need to assess the carbon implications of planned forest management actions. At the operational level, producing detailed stock estimates for the primary carbon pools becomes time-consuming and cumbersome. Carbon reporting functionality has been fully integrated within the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS), allowing users to produce carbon reports along with traditional FVS output. This added capability can be easily used by managers familiar with FVS and requires just a few additional keywords. All methodologi...

State and transition models are being utilized in forest management analysis processes to evaluate assumptions about disturbances and succession. These models assume valid information about seral class successional pathways and timing. The Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) was used to evaluate seral class succession assumptions for the Hiawatha National Forest in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plots located on the Hiawatha were stratified by Ecological Land Type and major forest type. A set of algorithms was developed for FVS to grow and evaluate the size...

Forest managers are increasingly called upon to provide long-term predictions of forest development. The dynamics of regeneration establishment, survival and subsequent recruitment of established seedlings to larger size classes is a critical component of these forecasts, yet remains a weak link in available models. To test the reliability of FVS-NE for simulating sapling (stems ≥ 0.5 in dbh) recruitment dynamics in stands subject to repeated partial harvests, we compared model predictions with long-term observations (n = 729 plots/5-yr interval combinations) from the Penobscot Experimental...

Natural resource managers use a variety of computer-mediated presentation methods to communicate management practices to the public. We explored the effects of using the Stand Visualization System to visualize and animate predictions from the Forest Vegetation Simulator-Fire and Fuels Extension in presentations explaining forest succession (forest growth and change over time), fire behavior, and management options. We used an experimental design with purposive samples of three populations: rural mountain residents, town residents, and student groups. We compared participants’ knowledge...

The Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) was used with Continuous Forest Inventory (CFI) data on the Spokane Indian Reservation to provide predicted yields over a 100-year period for 994 1/5 acre plots. The plots were grouped into five strata based on habitat type groupings, projected separately, and the stratum results were combined after processing. Results from the projections provided information which was useful in management planning. Problems with the unbalanced age-class distribution of the forest were shown to be largely compensated for by differing rates of the development among the...

When the Riordan brothers of Flagstaff, Arizona asked Gifford Pinchot to determine why there was a deficit in ponderosa pine seedlings, neither party understood the historical significance of what they were setting in motion for the field of forest research. The direct result of that professional favor was the establishment of the Fort Valley Experiment Station (Fort Valley) in 1908, and the insights produced through its research program are remarkable. The scientists that passed through Fort Valley are an accolade that commonly goes unmentioned, and includes extraordinary individuals such...