Tuesday, August 3, 2010 - 2:30 PMOOS 17-4: Engaging underrepresented audiences in the study of continental scale ecological change
Greg Reams, US Forest Service
Background/Question/Methods
The USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides a wealth of information on the nation’s forests that is largely untapped by members of the ecological education community.
FIA began collecting state level forest surveys in the 1930s in response to growing concerns over the status of the forestland base. State level summary reports of FIA data are available in PDF format and hardcopy. In addition, the information collected since the 1970’s is available on-line for twelve states and is available for all states for data collected since the 1980’s.
FIA collects information on at least one ground sample point every 5,980 acres (2,420 hectares) across the entire country, including Alaska and Hawaii. These ground points are measured every 5 to 7 years in the eastern US and 10 years in the western US, providing change estimates on the forestland landscape.
Access to FIA data is free to the public. Two on-line tools, FIDO and EVALIDator, are available to create user defined summary reports and maps for individual states or across state boundaries. The FIA Datamart website provides user guides, standard summary reports, MS Access database files and comma separated value files of the field collected and processed data for each plot.
FIA data can be utilized to monitor a wide range of forest landscape characteristics and conditions, including:
Carbon and biomass storage
Forest tree species distribution
Tree growth rates
Tree mortality rates
Tree removal rates due to human activity
Land use change
Because FIA operates at the continental scale, one factor that all users must address is the enormity of the dataset. There are over 1 million sample plot records and 14.9 million tree records in the FIA database. It is highly recommended that all users review the current FIADB User’s Guide. FIA also hosts webinars and offers on-line instructions for using the available tools. Finally, regional FIA customer service contacts are available as a resource.
Results/Conclusions
The USDA Forest Service FIA program provides a continental scale data set of the forestland of the US that is free to everyone. Summarized reports, on-line tools, field collected and processed data are available to assess forest trends in carbon, biomass, growth and mortality rates, tree species distribution and other forestland attributes. FIA staff is available to assist users to navigate through the large FIA dataset.
The USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides a wealth of information on the nation’s forests that is largely untapped by members of the ecological education community.
FIA began collecting state level forest surveys in the 1930s in response to growing concerns over the status of the forestland base. State level summary reports of FIA data are available in PDF format and hardcopy. In addition, the information collected since the 1970’s is available on-line for twelve states and is available for all states for data collected since the 1980’s.
FIA collects information on at least one ground sample point every 5,980 acres (2,420 hectares) across the entire country, including Alaska and Hawaii. These ground points are measured every 5 to 7 years in the eastern US and 10 years in the western US, providing change estimates on the forestland landscape.
Access to FIA data is free to the public. Two on-line tools, FIDO and EVALIDator, are available to create user defined summary reports and maps for individual states or across state boundaries. The FIA Datamart website provides user guides, standard summary reports, MS Access database files and comma separated value files of the field collected and processed data for each plot.
FIA data can be utilized to monitor a wide range of forest landscape characteristics and conditions, including:
Carbon and biomass storage
Forest tree species distribution
Tree growth rates
Tree mortality rates
Tree removal rates due to human activity
Land use change
Because FIA operates at the continental scale, one factor that all users must address is the enormity of the dataset. There are over 1 million sample plot records and 14.9 million tree records in the FIA database. It is highly recommended that all users review the current FIADB User’s Guide. FIA also hosts webinars and offers on-line instructions for using the available tools. Finally, regional FIA customer service contacts are available as a resource.
Results/Conclusions
The USDA Forest Service FIA program provides a continental scale data set of the forestland of the US that is free to everyone. Summarized reports, on-line tools, field collected and processed data are available to assess forest trends in carbon, biomass, growth and mortality rates, tree species distribution and other forestland attributes. FIA staff is available to assist users to navigate through the large FIA dataset.