Forest Inventory and Analysis

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Gregory Reams

USDA Forest Service, USA

The Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the U.S. Forest Service has been in continuous operation since 1930 with a mission to: “make and keep current a comprehensive inventory and analysis of the present and prospective conditions of and requirements for the renewable resources of the forest of the United States.” To deliver the mission, FIA collects, analyses, and reports information on the status and trends of forests, specifically where it exits, who owns it, how it is changing, how the vegetation is growing, and how much has died or been removed. FIA uses the latest technologies to acquire, manage, and analyze data, through the use of remote sensing, information management and statistical analyses employing spatial and temporal modeling techniques.

The program delivers current, consistent, and credible information for each state every five years. This information can be used in many ways, such as evaluating wildlife habitat conditions, assessing the sustainability of ecosystem management practices, and supporting planning and decision making activities undertaken by private and public enterprises.

Quality assurance is built into the system to verify the accuracy of our estimates and validate analytical results. This allows for states, federal, international agencies, industries, environmental organizations, and private landowners and consultants to rely on the credibility of the information to make critical management, policy and investment decisions.

Modern Program Enhancements

There has always been a strong demand for timely, consistent, and reliable forest inventory and monitoring information. In recent years, demand has growing for annual estimates, covering a broader suite of forest attributes, with more analysis and reporting and transparent access to data and information. In response, the U.S. Forest Service has significantly enhanced the FIA program by changing from a periodic survey to an annual survey, increased capacity to analyze and publish data and information through on-line web services.

Among contemporary issues addressed through models developed with FIA data are those associated with acid deposition, biogenic emissions, global warming, recreation, scenic beauty, urban sprawl, carbon accounting, woody and nonwoody biomass estimation, forest landowner attitudes and objectives, and fragmentation and parcelization of forest landscapes.

The continued strength of FIA’s sample design is linkage of its detailed time series observations of forest across all public and private ownerships. This enables scientists to use powerful time series models to post stratify the programs information to develop process-oriented conceptual models calibrated with data from other sources, such as agricultural statistical programs, economic reports, climate change scenarios, satellite imagery, severance taxes, user surveys, and U.S. Census data and estimates.

Recent improvements with geospatial technology have provided for useful and more powerful uses of the forest resource information. Of wide interest are broad scale forest attribute maps derived from classifications of satellite imagery that can use the FIA sample points to improve accuracies of forest maps associated with forest area, type, and change statistics. FIA works directly with the USGS EROS Data Center to improve the classification of the National Land Cover Data (NLCD). FIA provides in situ forest samples to increase the precision and accuracy of the national wall-to-wall 30 meter resolution NLCD products. The NLCD products are used to enhance the statistical precision of forest statistics at the county, state and national level.

Ecosystem Applications

FIA is expanding its research and production of nationwide maps of forest characteristics. To address emerging issues new spatial products include land use/land cover maps, fuel loads and fire risk, fragmentation, risk of insect and disease outbreaks, forest productivity, carbon stocks and flux, and wildlife habitat. These map and data products, along with county choropleth maps, field plot-based maps, and other ancillary geospatial databases are available online through the FIA tool FIDO (Forest Inventory Data Online). The functional delivery on these maps within FIDO is coined as “FIA Atlas”. FIA Atlas provides numerous maps of conditions, trends, attributes, indicators and related information about U.S. forests.

Reliable, high-quality data on environmental trends of the nation’s ecosystems are surprisingly scarce. In order to evaluate and assess sustainability of our societies, understanding how our natural systems are faring is essential. Factual, comprehensive, quality assured, transparent and credible information to assess our natural systems and there trends of improving or declining conditions are paramount for sound policy and decision making. FIA provides a systematic effort to assess what we know and do not know about the conditions of forests in the U.S. As such, FIA provides the most comprehensive and credible information on trends in indicators of forest sustainability. Assessments of trends in forest indicators of sustainability can be found in numerous publications including “The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems” available on line at www.heinzctr.org/ecosystems

In an update of the 2000 Renewable Resources Planning Act (RPA) Assessment (US Forest Service 2001) conducted by the Forest Service, 15 key findings have emerged since the publication of the original assessment on the status and trends of natural resources of U.S. forests and rangelands. FIA provides the fundamental forest resource information used in the federally mandated analyses and report. This report is provided every 10 years by the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act (RPA) of 1974. The last RPA Assessment was released in 2001. The Forest Services releases an interim update during the 10 year cycle. The Interim Update of the 2001 Renewable Resources Planning Act Assessment and related information can be found at www.fs.fed.us/research/rpa.

U.S. Forests can also play a major role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The FIA program is charged with producing carbon stock and flux information annually for U.S. Forests. This information is key in documenting changes and trends in carbon stocks and fluxes at the sub-regional, state and national level.

Conclusion

In summary, FIA provides unbiased information on indicators of the biological, physical and chemical condition of U.S. Forests. The Heinz Center reports that data are available for a higher percentage of forest indicators than any other ecosystem indicator. Much of this success is due to FIA’s robust 3 phase monitoring design. This design has allowed the data to shift from periodic inventories that occurred across the country on a state by state basis until the 1990s (Phase I), to annual inventories that occur in every state every year (Phase III), with a mix of both systems occurring in the transition (Phase II). For countries and entities interested in FIA forest monitoring design, this information is available in “The Enhanced Forest Inventory and Analysis Program-National Sampling Design and Estimation Procedures”. http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/gtr/gtr_srs080/gtr_srs080.pdf

Important Web Links to FIA are:

Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program. http://fia.fs.fed.us

Biophysical forest data. http://treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/20371

Forest Inventory Data Online (FIDO). http://fiatools.fs.fed.us/fido/statereports/index.html

Forest Inventory Mapmaker. http://www.ncrs2.fs.fed.us/4801/fiadb/fim21/wcfim21.asp

FIA data, estimates, and maps. http://fia.fs.fed.us/tools-data/data/

Forest Spatial Data Services Center. http://fia.fs.fed.us/tools-data/spatial/

FIA Strategic Plan. http://fia.fs.fed.us/library/fact-sheets/overview/FIA_Stratefic_Plan2.pdf.

National Atlas. http://www.nationalatlas.gov/mld/foresti.html

2001 NLCD. http://www.mrlc.gov/mrlc2k_nlcd.asp

RPA DataWiz. http://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/products/rpadatawiz

Timber Products Output Mapmaker. http://ncrs2.fs.fed.us/4801/fiadb/rpa_tpo/wc_rpa_tpo.ASP