Principle – Yield and Quality of Forest Goods are Sustainable

Criterion- Forest Management provides for sustainability of goods and services.

Indicator – Policy and planning are based on recent and accurate information.

Box B: Definition:

Resource data is the basis for designing and developing management plans to meet ownership objectives. The data should include information about the resource by structure, composition, and function. The dynamic nature of natural resource conditions requires frequent reviews and updates of the data to provide a sound base for decision making. Reviews should also consider environmental restrictions, social concerns, wildlife, and market demands in order to provide a complete and up-to-date picture.

Notes: The values and scales of different resources determine the type, intensity, and frequency of inventories needed for management decisions. The Idaho Department of Lands and Boise Cascade Corporation conduct timber inventories every five years, while the Boise National Forest aims at a ten-year interval.

Box D: Applicability to Different Landowners. Explain any differences:

Accurate information is more important to industry and state management programs because decisions are based on business protocol, where tradeoffs between environmental benefit and economic return must be made and justified. The Boise National Forest has the option to manage for marginal gain or revenue flows.

Non- industrial private owners are often limited by no having data and not being able to afford to purchase it.

Box E: Overlap:

CIFOR: 3.2.1

Notes:

Policy and planning are applicable to smaller-scale management areas and ownerships. However with the advent of the Ecosystem Management philosophy, future-planning efforts will be targeted at multiple owner landscapes to address management issues that transcend ownership boundaries.

Notes:

Generally, the fact that policy and planning efforts have up-to-date, accurate information is only a diagnostic measure. It says nothing about what might happen in the future. Current and accurate information may be predictive if it is utilized to simulate the future, however, there is no assurance that future implementation will follow the plan.

Notes: NA; Structure, function and composition are ecological parameters

Box I: Underlying Concepts:

Forest plans aim at providing long-term direction for managing forests. They contain overall directions and activities, which are implemented to obtain desired commodities and conditions. If management planning is to be effective, it must be based on recent and accurate information. The state of forest conditions must be known. Such information is obtained through various kinds of periodic measurements or inventories. Periodic inventories of commodities within the forest are needed in order to determine allowable harvest levels while achieving sustainability. This information may also be required for purposes of taxation, for justification of management expenditures (e.g. building roads), and other activities.

The measurement of various resource parameters adds no real value to the materials or benefits being assessed. Therefore, the objective is to plan an inventory that will be cost effective in attaining the specific objectives of management. Measuring techniques must be subordinate to the productive or beneficial phases of and operation, for the operation itself cannot be modified just to accommodate an inventory requirement (T.E. Avery 1975, Natural Resources Measurement. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. 339 pp.).

Underlying definition and concepts (from CIFOR Source):

Information is needed on the land, on physical, biological/ environment, social and economic, and on the people, the local population, together with the linking of land and people through the present land use.

Box J: Relevance to Sustainable/Unsustainable Management:

This information provides the measure of sustainability of resources. Thus, this is a relevant indicator because quality results of management are dependent upon the quality of information used to formulate the management program.

Economic, resource inventories and spatial resource data are essential informational components or building blocks necessary for developing management plans. Mapped data provides a spatial context for evaluation and analysis. Digitally mapped data provides a tool for complex analysis and quantification.

Purpose (from CIFOR Source):

• To establish the present situation, including problems
• To determine what are the resources for alternative systems of forest land use and management

Relevance to sustainable/unsustainable management:

In order to assess land suitability, not just from a physical point of view but with respect to biological/environmental, social and economic analysis. Forest land use types should be described in detail.

Box K: Measurement Methods:

While there are no standard measures for this indicator, an assessment can be made of the individual components of planning system information, to determine if policy and planning are based on recent and accurate information. The dates of inventories can be tabulated, and accuracy can be measured by standard statistical procedures. Map and spatial data can be measured and assessed by digital accuracy standards prescribed by the US Geological Survey. To meet the needs for review of the management situation every ten years and the need to complete new forest plans at least every 15 years, forest inventories should be updated on a five year cycle. Due to the volatility of economic behavior, the update period should be annual for economic information. To support needs for important trend line data, old information should be kept in an organized and accessible fashion.

Box L: Data Required:

Forest inventory summaries, population data for selected indicator species, social preference data, natural resource maps, cover types, wildlife areas, big game census and harvest data, potential vegetation, forest structural stage, transportation networks, hydrologic systems, market data, regulatory restrictions, and lists of threatened and endangered species.

Non-Industrial Private Owners: It is unlikely that this tenure group will have extensive data. The most likely data set would be a forest inventory. Sometimes US Forest Service or State data collection efforts will cover these private lands, but only at a very broad scale.. FIA ( Forest Inventory and Analysis) data plots have been established to quantify private forest ownership forest at a low level of accuracy. (Brown, M.J.; D.C. Chojnacky, 1996. Idaho’s Forests, 1991. USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. Resource bulletin INT-RB-88.)

Industry Owners: Have extensive data sets, however, these are regarded as proprietary in nature and utilized to gain competitive advantage. Forest inventories are done every five years.

State: Have extensive data sets that are generally available to the public. Examples: Continuous Forest Inventory Reports for the Southwestern and Payette Lakes Administrative Areas; 1996 Remeasurement. (Koski,1998)

Federal Land Management Agencies: Have extensive data sets that are available to the public. Example: Boise National Forest 1983 Inventory Data.

Box M: Data Used for the North American Test:

USFS data:

• Periodic forest inventories are conducted every 10 years. Inventory findings are reported and published in a series of statistical and analytical reports.
• Boise national Forest lands outside of the wilderness areas were included in the inventory.

CFI Plots

• Remeasurements 420 (2,100 points)
• New Timber Plots 143 (715 points)
• Non-forest 46 (230 points)

USFS Reference Documents:

1. Contract Number 53-0261-6-22
2. The West wide Forest Inventory Database User’s Manual, 1995, S.W. Woudenberg & T.O. Farrenkopf, USDA, General Techinical Report INT-GTR-317
3. Interior West Forest Land Resource Inventory Field Procedures, 1995, USDA, Intermountain Region
4. Inventory Reports; T04A, T009, T013, T011, T015, T029, T002

State Lands Data:

• CFI system based on 1994, Forest Inventory Field Procedures, Specifications, and Definition, manual. The precision goal is plus or minus 10 percent at the 95% confidence level for all sawtimber types combined.
• SW Area 119 plots
• Payette Area 131 plots
• Both areas were remeasured in 1996.
• Reference Documents:
• Idaho Department of Lands, Continuous Forest Inventory Report, Payette Lakes Supervisory Area, 1996 Remeasurement, W. Koski, 1998
• Idaho Department of Lands, Continuous Forest Inventory Report, Southwestern Supervisory Area, 1996 Remeasurement, W. Koski, 1998
• Non-industrial Private Data:
• Lands outside National Forest boundaries are measured by Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plot system. The data is summarized for a two-phase sampling design including:
• Field plots 292
• Photo points 100,000
• Reference Document:
• Southern Idaho’s Forest Land Outside National Forests, 1995, D.C. Chojnacky, USDA, Intermountain Research Station, INT-RB-82, 57 p.
• Industrial Data: Proprietary Information (Verified)
• Inventory
• CFI 488 plots remeasurement cycle 5 years
• Recon Plots 6,677 plots randomly distributed

Precision goal for the inventory is , plus or minus 10% at the 90% confidence level.

Box O: Assessing the Practicality:

In an overall sense this can be assessed repeatedly at a reasonable cost. It is being done on a continuing basis for the three major tenures of the Boise test area. The non-industrial private ownership is also being covered through the efforts of the USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) research program, which monitors changes in the Nation’s forests on a 10-year cycle. Idaho’s forests are covered by the Interior West Resource Inventory, Monitoring, and Evaluation Program at the Intermountain Research Station in Ogden, Utah. These inventories provide data on land area and wood volume that can be classified for many resource uses.

Box P: Assessing the Information Value:

This indicator may provide information that is useful to other stakeholders. The land managers already know that they are using up-to-date information, so this indicator, per-se, will be of little value to them. However, for other stakeholders, they undoubtedly will want to know that decisions are being based on recent, accurate measurements as opposed to being made with data that is too old to be relevant.

Precision goals and statistical inventory results are good indicators of the quality of information used to drive resource planning for the timber resource.

Box Q: Overall assessment:

Accepted.

Weakness: Most non-industrial private woodland owners, as individuals, do not have inventory information that will help them make management decisions. The FIA information is too sparse for individual use.

Strengths: Forest timber inventories have been conducted for several decades by all major owners and are part of their on-going work. The data gathered serves as a major part of the information needed to make management decisions. Inventories of other forest resources, such as big game populations, are also being conducted on a regular basis. Decisions made by the respective owners may be preempted by political pressure, but they are still based on the most accurate and up-to-date information available.

Box R: Did you rewrite or revise to a new indicator. If so what?

Combined with E3.

Box S: References:

• Brown, M.J.; D.C. Chojnacky, 1996. Idaho’s Forests, 1991. USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. Resource bulletin INT-RB-88.)
• S.W. Woudenberg & T.O. Farrenkopf, 1995, The West wide Forest Inventory Database User’s Manual USDA, General Technical Report INT-GTR-317
• Interior West Forest Land Resource Inventory Field Procedures, 1995, USDA, Intermountain Region
• USDA Forest Service Inventory Reports; T04A, T009, T013, T011, T015, T029, T002
• W. Koski, 1998, Idaho Department of Lands, Continuous Forest Inventory Report, Payette Lakes Supervisory Area, 1996 Remeasurement
• W. Koski, 1998, Idaho Department of Lands, Continuous Forest Inventory Report, Southwestern Supervisory Area, 1996 Remeasurement

Please record your notes on evaluating the indicator here