Charley Peterson
Resource Monitoring and Assessment Program
Pacific Northwest Station, Portland, Oregon
Progress on achieving consistency and compatibility
across all regions
FIA User Group Meeting
Houston, Texas
March 23, 2010
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New Sheriff in the West
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Old Sheriff in the West
Sue Willits
Administrative Director
PNW Research Station
Portland, Oregon
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Recommendation #5 to FIA from
the second Blue Ribbon Panel
• Consistent plot design & installation procedures
• Compatible field procedures and national manual
• Compatible analytical procedures
• Compatible database system
• Documentation of all of the above
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Consistent plot design
and installation procedures
• Plot design stable, integrated designs with NFS ~2001 and
provided for additional NFS measurements
• National standards allow for regional options such as
increased plot density, macro-plots or even hectare-sized
plots (paid for by regional partners)
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Consistent plot design
and installation procedures
• National protocols for Urban forest inventory, developed
with FHM, piloted in TN and CO for 5 years, and recently
being implemented in PNW (more on this later)
• National protocols for Range, developed by RMRS with
PNW and piloted with a joint USFS/BLM/NRCS project,
currently under review by RMRS and PNW
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Compatible field procedures and
national manual
• Version 5.0 is out and used for quite some time
• Core measurements have been stable
• National Core Field Guide and additional work done to
establish consistency for some regional add-ons
• The change proposal and updating process is transparent and
well documented
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Compatible field procedures and
national manual
• Regional protocols consolidated into core-optional procedures
in the national manual (e.g., tree damage, invasive plants,
down wood, nonforest measurements);
• “Tropical field guide" developed as companion to the
temperate field guide;
• National Data Recorder implemented in 3 regions in 2009,
and in PNW 2010;
• National Field Data collections system (MIDAS) - All data
will be collected with the same system for all on-grid plots,
and for all off-grid intensified plots.
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Compatible analytical procedures
• National "Bands" and "task teams" to develop one set
of data/analysis;
– Task teams created for Carbon, Understory Vegetation,
administratively withdrawn lands, Down Woody Material, etc.
• National data processing system (NIMS) algorithms
and procedures all in one place
– Forest Typing algorithms, species lists, volume equations,
Biomass calculations, core tables created etc...
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Compatible database system
• National processing system (NIMS-CS) to reduce regional
redundancy and streamline processing and IT resources;
• National Website: established to provide public access to all
non-confidential data for all FIA units;
• FIADB is publicly accessible and has a variety of tools;
• Tools - Data distribution tools (and data) have been more
readily available to our clients
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Documentation of all of the above
• FIADB documentation has been written and made available
• Change procedures, meeting notes, and organization are all
made available on the web
• Publications and on-line resources have been developed
– core analytical procedures behind the design (the “green book”
Bechtold and Patterson 2005)
– publications for each of the P3 indicators, and
– reports on QA results.
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And from Blue Ribbon Panel 2.5
• Establish guideline for posting data to FIADB
• Contract out field data collection to make it cheaper
• Develop analysis partnerships with agencies, universities, and
private companies
• Re-evaluate core data list
• Data management: increase emphasis and centralize it
• Panel creep is a problem
• Formal agreements with states on data collection and analysis
•
Finally - fully fund all states
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What other things we need
• More partnership visibility at the national forest level
• Lots of requests for maps and they’re popular although they really
represent another model or picture of a system but not reality.
• Need to make better use of the dataset itself with estimates that have
confidence levels
• More use made of tools like DATIM (queries of FIADB)
• True potential for FIA is at some point adding user-friendly queries
(like USGS, NPS, and wilderness institute offer) that can provide
some local options (i.e. maintain relevance)
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Why macro plots out west?
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Proportion of tree density and net volume by diameter class, for
live and dead trees in CA,OR and WA
70.0
60.0
50.0
40.0
tpa_pct
30.0
vol_pct
20.0
10.0
0.0
1-5"
5-10"
10-20"
20-40"
40"+
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