Forest Vegetation Simulator Project Planning
The Forest Vegetation Simulator is an important tool for analyzing landscape level projects that span long time horizons. The simulator is used to forecast sustained yield limits and harvest levels for land management plans and is also used to assess the impacts of management alternatives on other forest characteristics, such as fire behavior, age class structure, and wildlife habitat.
This page provides helpful tools for large scale vegetation projects and will be updated regularly as new information becomes available.
Forest Vegetation Simulator Model Calibration
Prior to using the Forest Vegetation Simulator to develop timber yields, such as sustained yield limits and other stand attributes for forest planning, the model can be calibrated using local growth data.
Model Calibration Guide (PDF, 1.09 MB)
This guide steps through using local growth data to correct for model bias for large tree diameter growth and small tree height growth. This document contains detailed information regarding these mechanisms as well as a few exercises that walk the user through the process.
Modeling Regeneration
Most geographic variants of FVS do not automatically input regeneration into projections, so many users will need to determine how to parameterize FVS with regeneration to provide better projections of future forest conditions. Two options are provided:
REGIMPUTE Addfiles (ZIP, 159 KB) have been developed using Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data that will impute natural regeneration automatically into simulations based on stand stocking, Forest Type and canopy cover. These can be useful for long term modeling scenarios.
REGEN3 is a regeneration program developed by the Southern Research Station that estimates regeneration for the specific areas of Southern Appalachia, Central Appalachia and North Cumberland Plateau. Additional guidance on using FSVEG data for REGEN3 (ZIP, 432 KB).