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Tools

The USDA National Agroforestry Center has developed a variety of tools to assist in the planning and design of agroforestry systems. While tools do not usually provide definitive answers, when combined with the knowledge and experience of producers, technical assistance providers, and others, they can be helpful in making informed decisions.

Design and Planning Tools

  • AgBufferBuilder - This GIS-based tool for water quality helps design more effective buffers.
  • Conservation Buffers - This book offers design guidelines for multipurpose buffers.
  • Tree Advisor - This tool can be used to select trees and shrubs for conservation and production purposes in the northern and central Great Plains.
  • Trees Outside of Forests (TOF) Interactive Map Viewer – This tool highlights windbreaks and riparian buffers in the northern Great Plains and provides stream, crop, and soils data.

Economic Tools

  • Buffer$ - This Microsoft Excel-based tool can be used to analyze the costs and benefits of buffers compared with traditional crops.
  • Forest Farming Calculator - This Microsoft Excel-based tool can be used for calculating the break-even prices for forest grown botanticals.
  • NTFP Calculator - This Microsoft Excel-based tool provides general estimates of income potential from harvesting and selling non-timber forest products from a planting.
  • Windbreak Economic Model - This Microsoft Excel-based tool can be used to analyze the costs and benefits of a windbreak that you design.
* Be sure to enable macros when opening these Excel-based tools.

Learning and Networking Tools

  • Climate Change Bibliography - An annotated bibliography on agroforestry's role in adaptation and mitigation under climatic variability and change. This document is focused on the period of 1992 to 2017. An online version of the bibliography, which is continuously updated, can be found at this link: Zotero Agroforestry and Climate Change.
  • Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Agroforestry Grants Index - This table catalogues and indexes many completed SARE projects related to agroforestry by agroforestry practice, state, date, and project type.
  • Agroforestry Webinar Library - This table collects over 150 recorded webinars on agroforestry topics and can be sorted by practice, year, host, or speaker.
  • Inside Agroforestry Article Library - This table provides a searchable list of over 250 articles from the National Agroforestry Center’s newsletter on various topics since 2000, organized by practice, state, year, author, and title.
  • Riparian Bibliography - An annotated and indexed bibliography of literature about vegetated stream riparian zones and their effects on stream nutrients, sediments, and toxic substances. This document is focused on the period of 1960 to 2003.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/nac/resources/tools/index.shtml