The
Rural Technology Initiative (RTI), a UW/WSU technology transfer
center, has used LMS to address a number of forest management
issues:
- Ten case studies on the impact of the Washington Forest
and Fish Regulations (FFR) on smaller-parcel private owners
in
western Washington revealed that the economics are not viable
for some owners, that land conversions represent an increasingly
high risk, and that alternative management plans to the FFR
regulations are needed to sustain forest management. LMS
has been used to create templates for alternative management
plans
that are easily implemented by landowners regardless of computer
skills.
- Nine case studies on the impact of the FFR on family
forestland owners in eastern Washington demonstrated high
economic costs
and management constraints that will lead to forest health
problems in riparian areas. LMS supported the develop of
alternate plans that improved forest health while providing
sustainable
cash flows. Findings became a part of the governor appointed
Forest Health Working Group’s report.
- WSU Extension agents are using LMS in Coached Forest
Stewardship Planning short-courses to help small, private
owners collect
inventory data for their tree farm and simulate future
economic, ecological, and aesthetic conditions.
- For the development of a multi-owner Habitat Conservation
Plan (HCP), LMS was used to simulate many alternative thinning
treatments and assess their potential to meet the regulatory objective
to provide old-forest functionality to protect species
at risk. Alternatives that provide both old-forest function and viable
economic returns can be used as templates for easy application
by small owners and better understanding by regulators.
- At a mothballed nuclear power plant site (Satsop, WA),
Fish and Wildlife Department (FWD) Habitat Evaluation Procedures
were used with LMS to develop management plans for habitat
protection as measured by Habitat Suitability Indices.
The project demonstrated that FWD evaluation procedures could be
reliably simulated with LMS leading to the selection of
a preferred management plan.
- Forest fuel removal analysis for the Okanogan and Fremont
National Forests demonstrated thinning strategies that
can reduce
fire risk at low cost. The analysis included impacts on habitat
and carbon sequestration model links that show enormous
potential for carbon storage by treating stands to avoid fires (600 million
tons per forest). Using LMS to design treatments that reduce
fire risk made it possible to directly assess the many
avoided costs that resulted from reducing fire risk, including fire
fighting costs, fatalities, facility losses, regeneration
costs, timber and habitat losses etc., justifying fire risk reduction
treatments as a good investment with a quick payback.
- Carbon storage was modeled for King County Government
showing expected increases in storage under current management
paradigms.
- The impact of treatments designed for more acceptable
aesthetics were evaluated for several local governmental
agencies
with LMS, showing the cost of treatments for comparison with aesthetic
perceptions and other outputs.
Tribes: Quinault Nation, Makah Nation, Yakama Nation,
Confederated Tribes of Colville, The Spokane Tribe, The
Lummi Tribe,
The Nooksack Tribe, The Stillaguamish Tribe, The Yurok
Tribe
(CA) and attendees to the Intertribal Timber Council
Meetings have
received training on LMS.
The Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial
Materials (CORRIM, a non-profit consortium of 15 research institutions
evaluating Life Cycle analysis) used LMS for evaluating
the impact of management alternatives. Their research
findings used LMS to track carbon storage in the forest,
in products
with fossil fuel displacement through co-generation,
and through product substitution. CORRIM findings demonstrate
that accounting
for product carbon storage is very important and if used
with carbon credit incentives can promote intensive forest
management,
which would in turn substantially increase the carbon
pool
in construction while also displacing fossil fuel intensive
products and reducing subsequent green house gas emissions,
a critical impact not yet recognized by the Kyoto protocol.
Washington DNR land managers participated in a training
exercise using LMS to achieve a wide-array of desired
future conditions/objectives
resulting in a better understanding by the managers of
the requirements needed for success in achieving objectives.
LMS is also used for evaluation and display in the timber
sales
program.
Community College educational users: Green River Community
College, Spokane Community College, Peninsula Community
College, Heritage College, NW Indian College (all in
WA), Mt Hood
Community College (OR), Central Oregon Community College
(OR), Chemeketa
Community College (OR) have used LMS in order to more
efficiently educate students on causal affects in forestry.
LMS is
an integrated part of courses in at least four of these
colleges.
USDI BLM used LMS to develop long-term management plans
in several regions.
PNW Research Station has used LMS to compare the impacts
of regulations across several states and to compare tree
list
simulation methods to other methods for broad regional
assessments.
Four thousand copies of the LMS software have been
downloaded from the web by users or distributed by request
on CD-ROM.
Since LMS is available on the web, and is in use by educational
institutions, there are many users outside of Washington.
A partial list of other organizations/places where LMS
is used
is provided below:
- USDA FS Olympic, Gifford Pinchot, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie,
Colville, Okanogan, Wenatchee - all national forests in Washington;
Fremont, Blue River forests in Oregon; Bent Creek Experimental Forest
in Asheville; a trial landscape on the Tongas National
Forest in Alaska; the Allegheny National Forest; and Bridger-Teton
National Forest.
- Washington DNR research projects (Skagit, Capital, and
Olympic Experimental State Forests, The Stewardship Forestry
Program and the Small Forest Landowner Office)
- Oregon Department of Forestry used LMS research in developing
their structure-based management plans for state forests.
- Higher Education users: U of Washington, U of Maine,
Yale University, Michigan Technical Institute, Pennsylvania
State University,
U of Missouri, West Virginia U, U of Massachusetts,
Brevard College NC.
- Continuing Education: WSU Extension (coached forest stewardship
planning short courses to help small forest landowners
build forest plans).
- Economic Development and Conservation users and applications:
Columbia Pacific Resource Conservation and Economic
Development District (WA), Lakeview Resource Council (OR), Okanogan
Land Trust (WA), Satsop Forest (WA).
- Rural Communities and Utilities: City of Colville, Bremerton
Municipal Watershed, Family Forest Foundation (Programmatic
Habitat Conservation Plan for small forestland owners).
- Olympic Natural Resources Center, Forks (WA).
- Pack Forest (UW's research and demonstration forest)
and Yale-Meyers Experimental Forest.
- Washington Forestry Consultants (20+ can be listed, many
more are likely).
- Washington tree farmers (many).
- Pennsylvania tree farmers (many supported by Pennsylvania
State University Extension use of LMS).
- Recent use by Yale and other eastern universities have
resulted in new applications: InterForest Consulting for
the
Lyme Timber Co. in New Hampshire; Waynesville Watershed of Haywood County,
North Carolina; an experimental watershed by Potlatch
in Idaho; Mead Westvaco Experimental Forest, West Virginia; Yale and
the USDA Forest Service Laboratory in Stoneville,
Mississippi have applications in Yazoo National Wildlife
Refuge,
Delta National Forest in Mississippi, and Dewey Wills Wildlife
Management Area, Louisiana.
- Doris Duke Charitable Trust research projects are applying
LMS for certification/sustainability analysis
on: Seven Islands Land Co., Maine; New Hampshire Fish and
Game Dept.; Fort Lewis
Army Base, WA; Collins Pine Timber Co., OR; Pt.
Blakely Timber Co., WA; Oregon Dept of Forestry.
Why use LMS?
LMS uniquely and efficiently provides multiple outputs from
simulations of forest disturbances or treatments and is available
from the web so that any consortium of interested groups,
large or small, have easy access without incurring prohibitive
development costs.
Outputs of key interest based on simulated stand growth across
landscape scales include tree lists, log sorts from treatments,
costs, revenues, economic measures such as forest and land
value, habitat measures, wind throw risk, fire risk, insect
risk, carbon pools from the forest through to markets, visual
characteristics, and more. LMS provides a suite of programs
that supports a comprehensive analysis of forest management
alternatives complete with tabular, graphical, and visual
displays of the consequences of forest disturbances or treatments.
Extended public benefits from prior investments in many USFS
developed programs such as the Forest Vegetation Simulator
(FVS) , the Fire and Fuels Extension (FFE), Envision, and
others are realized from public distribution of LMS. FVS
variants exist for all regions in the US. Other growth models
are available and/or can be included.
LMS also uses visualization software developed by USFS
for stand or landscape visualizations and links to FFE,
a fire
risk estimation program developed by USFS. LMS runs under
Windows© and links tabular output to Excel© spreadsheets
for easy analysis and transfer to other programs. LMS functionality
is enhanced by filters that have been designed to accommodate
inventory and GIS data in many formats. It includes a log
bucking model to feed the financial analysis. It incorporates
the best science available for modeling habitat suitability
and biodiversity index models; carbon sequestration models;
fire risk, wind risk, and economic models; and can easily
be modified to incorporate new or better models as they
become available. LMS incorporates the best available science
for
ecosystem management modeling under a program control system
that is easily managed by forest managers and planners.
LMS additionally serves as an attractive educational tool
for
teaching cause and effect relationships between management
and outcomes.
Key software programs used by LMS include FVS, Organon
(DLL version), SPS, SVS, EnVision, bucktree (internal log
bucking),
cwdsim (internal snag/log simulator), fvsfilter (FVS interface),
RegenEditor (internal regeneration editor), str_class (internal
structural stage classification program), CORRIM’s
carbon accounting program, an optimum log-cutting algorithm
and links to FFE. An Inventory Wizard simplifies inventory
data collection and input. An Economatic program offers
simple analysis of forest and land values, cash flow (costs
and
revenues), and other economic measures.
|
