North Central Research Station NFP 2000 - Forest Inventory and Analysis Strategic Monitoring

Introducing the Northern Research Station

The North Central Research Station and the Northeastern Research Station have joined to form the Northern Research Station. Our 20-state region spans the Midwest from Minnesota to Missouri and the Northeast from Maine to Maryland.

Our Research Programs in the National Fire Plan 2000

Forest Inventory and Analysis Strategic Monitoring

Station: NC submitting for 5 Stations with Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Programs.

Topic(s): A-i. Fire Fighting Capacity and Preparedness-Resource allocation and decision support; C-i. Reducing Hazardous Fuels and Fire Risk-Assessment; and the ability to directly and indirectly benefit, support, and monitor activities and impacts of A-ii, B-i, B-ii, C-iii, C-iv, and D-i.

Proposal title: Strategic monitoring of fuel loadings and fire potentials in US forests through the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program.

Other proposals to which this is linked: NC-1.1 Fire risk assessment; NC-1.2 Public/community perceptions of risk; NC-1.5 Fire weather forecasting; NC-3.3 Wildland-urban interface.

RWU (or Program or Team) and location(s): NC-4801 St. Paul, MN; NE-4801 Newtown Square, PA; PNW-4801 Portland, OR; RMRS-4801 Ogden, UT; SRS-4801 Asheville, NC.

Description: FIA proposes collecting detailed fuel loading data (forest vegetation composition and structure, and coarse woody debris {CWD}) on ~1800 of its systematic sampling plots each year, developing correlations to its remaining ~28,000 annual sample plots, and then extrapolating those relationships across the forested landscape using remote-sensing and GIS modeling techniques. The results will provide an empirical, field-validated baseline snapshot and annual assessment of the fuel loading situation in US forests.

Research or development question, issue, or need: Strategic inventory and monitoring provides baseline data for good policy formulation, and provides the means to judge the success, progress, and benefits of policies and resulting practices by capturing deviations from the baseline over time. The annual assessments resulting from this effort will provide baseline information on the current forest fuels situation in the US to help in formulating fire and fuels management policy and future direction, and provide information on how the US fuels situation is changing over time. As a result, these assessments will provide the gauge for determining if fire and fuels policies and practices are having the desired effect: are forest fuel loadings going up or down; are abatement practices having a significant impact; are opportunities being missed; are hot spots developing? Such information is of critical importance, and such information can only be gathered through a comprehensive, consistent, and reliable strategic-level inventory and monitoring system.

Research and development approach: FIA will leverage its extensive network of field sites by augmenting currently collected information on forest condition with extensive sampling and analysis of fuels across ecoregions, forest types, ownerships, stand sizes, slopes, aspects, and other site and stand characteristics. The relationships between forest conditions and forest fuels on the geo-referenced sample plots will be extrapolated across the forested landscape using remote-sensing and GIS modeling techniques, such as k-nearest neighbor. FIA will then work with both internal and external partners to expand the relevance of the fuels data by providing strategic assessments of fire and smoke risk, fuel abatement opportunities, high risk communities (life, property, or dollar loss), and by providing the baseline data for developing, calibrating, and validating various fire, fuels, and smoke predictive models.

First year outcomes: Methods development; collection of baseline forest vegetation and CWD data for national fuels assessment; regional fuel assessments and other value-added assessments, analyses, and map products.

Second year outcomes: Continued annual fuels data collection to build baseline and track trends; initial national fuel assessment and other value-added assessments, analyses, and mapped products.

Three to Five years outcomes: Continued annual fuels data collection to build baseline and track trends; annually updated national fuels assessment and other value-added assessments, analyses, and mapped products. Detailed reports by area, location, ownership, forest type, etc. on status and trends in fuel loads and fire/smoke/community risk as well as impacts of and recommendations for fuel/fire/smoke risk abatement.

Staffing needs (Scientist years, technician years, etc) by series and grade: 3 scientist year equivalents GS-12/13; 15 technician year equivalents GS-5/7/9.

Description of skills required: Senior-level scientists/analysts with specialties in fire/fuels/CWD. Technicians skilled in vegetation sampling, processing, etc.

Potential Partners (universities, federal agencies and labs, national forests, states, private companies, etc): 5 regional FIA units, individual State forestry agencies, various RWU within each Station, University of Minnesota.

Funding requested: A total of $1.7 million to be distributed across the 5 FIA Units based on workloads. Needs to be available annually to move from baseline snapshot to annual monitoring of trends.