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THE ANALYSIS OF FOREST INFORMATION
Monitoring the current status, health, and use of our forests is critical at a time when serious challenges confront us: globalization, climate change, and population growth, among others. The search for solutions creates a hunger for data and information on a variety of scales. The US Forest Service has a proud history of conservation and management, and through its Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) program, the agency takes the lead in monitoring the nation’s forest resource. The federal program works with partners in states, universities, private industry, and others to collect and provide state-of-the-art data, information, and knowledge. A timeline of the program shows various intersecting milestones in performing a seemingly impossible mission: inventorying the forest resources in one of Earth’s geographically largest nations.
In 1928, Congress directed the secretary of agriculture to conduct a comprehensive survey of the nation’s “present and prospective requirements for timber and other forest products.” It’s important to note the economic focus of this instruction. Early inventories focused on timberland, those lands that can produce at least 20 cubic feet of wood per acre annually and are not excluded from management. These landscapes produce valuable forest products such as wood and paper.
As the FIA program matured, our collective understanding of the value of trees and forests has evolved to include much more than traditional forest products. Some people collect non-timber forest products (e.g., edible mushrooms, fish and game), and others use the forest for other purposes such as camping, canoeing, and biking. To inventory resources relevant to these broader needs and monitor long-term trends in forest health and productivity, the program had to change. The population of interest changed from timberland to forestland.
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The FIA program maintains three primary streams of data that align with the three
missions of the program:
1. Curate a network of field plots (the sampling areas where actual trees are counted) to measure the current status of the nation’s forests.
2. Assess the nation’s timber products industry.
3. Survey forest landowners to better understand their motivations, activities, and challenges.
Each component of the FIA program presents geospatial challenges. To address these challenges, the Forest Service has long been at the forefront of applying the latest GIS technology. This chapter will explore these different dimensions of the FIA mandate, and its strategy of combining traditional observation and observation methods—boots on the ground—with modern technology to accomplish its goals.
Congressional acts Internal USFS actions Technological advances
1887 Aerial photography First experiments using aerial photographs to measure forest area are done in Germany.
1891 1st Forest Reserve created Yellowstone Park Timber Reserve later renamed Shoshone National Forest.
1897 The Organic Administrative Act Bureau of Forestry is renamed the United States Forest Service and Forest Reserves are transferred to its management.
1907 1st National Forests
First National Forests Forest reserves are redesignated as national forests.
1940 Air photo interpretation World War 2 pushes advancements in aerial photograph interpretation.
1978 The Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Research Act Replaced previous research legislation’s but with similar language.
1974 The Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act Amended previous research legislation and added non-timber interests.
1988 Forest Ecosystems and Atmospheric Pollution Research Act increased inventory frequencies for atmospheric monitoring and enabled the creation of the Forest Service Health Monitoring Program (FHM).
1998 Agriculture Research and Extension and Education Reform Act (1998 Farm Bill)
Required 20% resample of FIA plots annually with national standards for measurements and products, and also integrated FIA and FHM into one program.
2014 Agriculture Act
(2014) Farm Bill) Established the near future of the FIA program regarding urban inventory and forest mass/carbon monitoring.
2021 Landsat 9
Projected launch date of Landsat 9.
2013 Landsat 8
Launches most recent Landsat mission.
1928 McSweeny- McNary Forest Research Act Founding legislation of inventory and monitoring programs by the US Forest Service.
1990 The Food Agriculture Conservation and Trade Act (1990 Farm Bill) Encourage improved inventory methods and led to Forest Service inventories of urban forest resources.
1990s FHM
Initiation of the forest health monitoring FHM programs.
1905 USFS
Bureau of Forestry becomes the United States Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot becomes first chief of the forest service.
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Bureau of Forestry becomes the United States Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot becomes its first chief, and Forest Reserves are transferred to its management.
1919 Aerial infrared
Samuel O. Hoffman is the first to remotely sense from an aircraft using thermal infrared.
1919 Initiation of the Canadian Forestry Mapping Program.
1930 USFS
US Forest Service begins inventory of nation’s forests on a state-by-state basis starting in the West under the title “Forest Survey” later renamed Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA).
1950s Double sampling
US Forest Service FIA program evaluates and adopts a double sampling for stratification process.
1968 FINSYS
Forest Inventory
Analysis System (FINSYS) program used for tabulating inventory data.
1972 Landsat 1
Landsat one launches.
1980s Lidar
1980s airborne lidar becomes visible with the advent of advanced GPS systems.
1992 blueprint
FIA staff produces a blueprint for forest inventory and analysis research and vision for the future which reshapes the program to improve data quality and inventory needs.
1905 Transfer Act
1999 MODIS
1960s FIA plots have been established in all 48 conterminous states, and second inventories have been completed in some western states.
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) launched on board the TERA satellite.
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GIS for Science
A detailed timeline of the congressional acts, Forest Service actions, and technological advances that have organized and advanced the systematic collection of data about the US forest lands. (Timeline adapted from Bechtold and Patterson 2005; Landsat 2016; Shaw 2008).
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020