Multiple-resource Analysis and Geographic Information System

MAGIS is a Spatial Decision Support System for scheduling a variety of vegetation treatments and road-related activities including construction, reconstruction, and obliteration.  MAGIS uses optimization to  select the spatial arrangement and timing of treatments that fits user-determined objectives and constraints. MAGIS users can also specify the location and timing for specific treatments to test  'what-if' scenarios.   MAGIS includes a wide variety of options for analysis and is designed for spatial watershed analysis with wide objectives and issues.  A variety of resource effects, management targets, and economic costs or benefits can be used to specify the objective and constraints for scheduling both vegetation treatments and road activities. Solutions are represented as maps and in tables.  MAGIS can be used by GIS experts and by GIS novices.

MAGIS eXpress is designed for tactical-level planning of vegetation treatment projects, particularly when road access is an issue, such as treatments involving commercial timber harvest. It represents a scaled-back version of MAGIS and has some restrictions for user-defined parameters. It does, however include a dedicated solver that obviates the need for the user to obtain the commercial solver used by MAGIS.

     MAGIS was developed by the Economic Aspects of Forest Management Unit of the Rocky Mountain Research Station. located at the Missoula Forestry Sciences Laboratory, in cooperation with the University of Montana. The developers include Greg Jones (Principle Investigator), Hans Zuuring (Principle Investigator,University of Montana), Janet Sullivan, Kurt Krueger

Programming partners include Scott Hassler of Hastec Associates, Stewart Britain (ind. contractor), and Carroll Nelson and Associates.
     The MAGIS team in Missoula includes other experts who are available to assist end-users to build and analyze MAGIS models.

MAGIS and MAGIS eXpress are in the public domain (software) and may be re-distributed but not sold, reverse-engineered or otherwise de-constructed.

For more information, please call or email:

Janet Sullivan
Rocky Mountain Research Station
Forestry Sciences Laboratory
200 E. Broadway
Missoula, MT 59801

406-329-3414