successes--our major accomplishments
Natural Resources Inventory and Monitoring

FIA Continues Resource Inventory Work in the South

William G. Burkman (865-862-2073)
bburkman@fs.fed.us

All Southern Region States except Oklahoma and Mississippi continue to implement the annual inventory. Mississippi initiated an accelerated survey to re-measure the old prism points and establish fixed-radius plots. Oklahoma is scheduled to begin its inventory in FY07.

Version 3.0 of the National Field Guide was finalized and became effective in October 2005. It has now been implemented in most Southern States. The Mississippi survey was added to the existing data collection program for version 3.0 of the Field Guide. This survey includes an abbreviated data collection protocol for down woody material, and tree-level damage variables related to hurricanes and other weather events.

Training provided to State cooperators in FY06 included sessions for new FIA employees and refresher sessions in several locations. Training sessions provided Phase 3 data collection protocol updates and certified all Southern State and Federal field data collection crews. Ozone training sessions were conducted and State crews certified for ozone data collection. SRS FIA also hosted a training session for the pilot urban inventory being conducted in Tennessee.

Important portable data recorder programs and products were developed, and loading of data from the field has been improved. Transition from the regional processing system to the National Information Management System (NIMS) was initiated, and use of NIMS will enable SRS FIA to process and post data more rapidly. Improved procedures for loading and editing Phase 3 data (data about soil and down woody material) were implemented.

The Spatial Data Services Center fulfilled 240 data requests from governmental and non-governmental clients. Data was compiled for 21 separate yearly data collection efforts in the Southern United States. Also, results of 23 separate yearly data collection efforts were posted to the national FIA website for public use.
(Back to summary)

FIA Participates in Development of SOLE (Southern On-Line Estimator)

William G. Burkman (865-862-2073)
bburkman@fs.fed.us

A FIA scientist and a staff member continued to collaborate with scientists of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc. (NCASI), in development of SOLE (Southern On-Line Estimator), an analysis tool that uses state-of-the art statistical methods to produce additional tables, maps, and graphs from data in the national FIA database.

An additional outcome of the project has been five FIA Plot Visualization movies. The movies are in a standard .avi format and will play on any computer. They show viewers the diversity of structures that occur in specific forest types by displaying rapid sequences of tree maps for FIA plots. The viewer can scan all plots of a particular forest type in a State; however, not all States and forest types are included yet. The species that occur in the forest type will have red crowns, and other species have crowns of different colors. The last frame in each movie shows a color table that matches species with colors.

More information about SOLE is available at http://ncasi.uml.edu/SOLE/
(Back to summary)

FIA's New Growth-Removals-Mortality Model Up and Running

William G. Burkman (865-862-2073)
bburkman@fs.fed.us

The transition from periodic to annual inventories and the change from a variable-radius design to remeasurements in fixed-radius plots resulted in numerous delays in data availability. During the past two years, scientists from the Northern FIA unit and the Southern FIA unit have worked together to develop the detailed equations and computer code needed to populate common national databases that will house the new information on growth-removals-mortality (GRM) components. Exhaustive testing and evaluation of the system’s performance were conducted in FY06, and the new GRM module is now ready for operation. As a result of this accomplishment, GRM data derived from the current annual plot design has been produced for Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, eastern Texas, and North Carolina.
(Back to summary)

FIA Continues To Develop Reliable Information about Resource Use and Timber Product Output

William G. Burkman (865-862-2073)
bburkman@fs.fed.us

Seven State timber product output (TPO) assessments, the southern pulpwood production report for 2004, and a harvest and utilization study report for North Carolina were completed and published.

State TPO reports were published for calendar year 2003 for Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. These reports show that output increased slightly in some states and decreased slightly in others. The southern pulpwood report for 2004 indicates that production of pulpwood in the region increased by 4 percent, and that increased output of pulpwood roundwood accounted for this change. The North Carolina harvest and utilization study for 2002 reports that 86 percent of total measured softwood volume and 75 percent of total measured hardwood volume was utilized for a product. Utilization data has been collected for Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and utilization reports for these States are forthcoming.
(Back to summary)

Other Significant Accomplishments

Continued partnerships with State forestry organizations:

Iimplemented inventory in Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina, completing approximately 55 percent of the field data collection by September 30, 2006.

Continued to provide access to FIA data through the Spatial Data Services in Knoxville, TN, which provided access to FIA data without compromising the security of the plot locations or land ownership privacy (Privacy Law-Farm Bill 2004).

Collected and processed forest industry data for 12 of the 13 Southern States.

Completed and processed felled tree studies for Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

Continued a pilot study in Tennessee for an urban forest inventory, with the intent of developing the necessary

support infrastructure for an efficient production effort.

Compiled 21 sub-cycles of annual data for Southern States.

Posted nine sub-cycles of data and made plans to post an additional 13 sub-cycles by September 30, 2006.

Posted Phase 3 (forest health) data for 2003-2005 to FIADB for the P2 sub-cycles currently available.

Implemented moving average modules with National Information Management System (NIMS).

Posted Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands data by September 30, 2006.

Implemented NIMS 2.2 in production mode.

Conducted training on data request process and privacy issues.

Cleaned up plot coordinates for current inventories.

Made it possible to post regional invasive species data through FIA’s Internet site, and joined this data with the Phase 2 data.

Initiated conversion of all past data to the National 3.0 data format.

Developed a data request tracking system in Oracle.

Developed additional pre- and post-processing tools.

Developed an internal FIADB for analysts.

Started development of 53 national tables using the PHP programming language.

Loaded legacy surveys into Oracle tables.

Posted the status of plot data collection, processing, and data posting to the panel tracking report weekly.

Initiated an electronic quarterly SRS FIA information update to keep partners, cooperators, and FIA data users informed about the status of FIA in the South.

Conducted three FIA Database training sessions for various FIA data users.

Conducted three NIMS training sessions for FIA employees to accelerate the transition from regional processing of FIA data to NIMS.

Data from previous cycles are being loaded into NIMS formats so growth-removal-mortality information can be computed.

Provided support to national FIA programs and work applications, as follows:

FIA employees and State Foresters’ staffs served on national technical bands.

Performed budget monitoring and tracking for the National FIA Program.

Negotiated and monitored national cooperative agreements.

Held leadership positions including:

Continued Phase 1 area estimation work, including further research and testing of the new methodology in cooperation with the Northern Research Station.

Developed a certification procedure for Phase 1 photo interpreters.

Developed a photo interpretation program for the Southern States, as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, presented at the 2nd International Conference on Discrete Global Grids.

Implemented a moving average module for Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and east Texas.

Continued to develop enhanced Internet-based query systems and tools for tracking the progress of annual State inventories.
(Back to summary)

Partnership Highlight

Mississippi Re-inventory Effort Following Hurricane Katrina

William G. Burkman (865-862-2073)
bburkman@fs.fed.us

Hurricane Katrina made landfall at the Louisiana-Mississippi State line on August 29, 2005. More than 1,800 people lost their lives in the storm and the flooding that followed it. Cities and towns were damaged heavily over a wide area, as were civil, industrial, and agricultural installations and infrastructure, and forest resources.

Following the storm, SRS FIA partnered with the Arkansas Forestry Commission, Georgia Forestry Commission, South Carolina Forestry Commission, and Texas Forest Service to rapidly complete a re-inventory in Mississippi to quantify the damage to forest resources in that State. The Northern Research Station FIA unit provided assistance in the data collection effort, and funding was provided through the Southern Region ($0.5M in supplemental hurricane funding), by the Washington Office ($0.5M in discretionary funding), and through SRS FIA ($0.4M in appropriated funds).

The re-inventory fieldwork involved making re-measurements on existing FIA plots; establishing the new annual, fixed-radius National FIA plots; and collecting additional data relating to tree damage and down woody material. The down woody material data will be useful to workers who need to quantify forest fire fuel loads. The partners provided field staff to assist with the data collection efforts in Mississippi so that the project could be completed by the proposed deadline.
(Back to summary)

Key International Activities

Sonja N. Oswalt, Thomas J. Brandeis, and Britta P. Dimick authored a poster that was presented at the Caribbean Urban Forestry Conference, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, June 2006. The presentation was entitled Phytosociology of Vascular Plants on An International Biosphere Reserve: Virgin Islands National Park, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands.

Sonja N. Oswalt, Thomas J. Brandeis, David W. Steadman, and Scott K. Robinson authored a poster and an abstract that were presented at the Caribbean Urban Forestry Conference, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, in June 2006. The presentation was entitled Wintering Neotropical Migratory Songbirds and Resident Landbirds on St. John, USVI.

V.A. Rudis authored the paper Nonnative Plant Invasions with the Southern Forest Inventory and Analysis Program, which was presented at the Ecological Society of America workshop on ecology in the era of globalization in Merida, Mexico, in January 2006.
(Back to summary)

Awards

The Southern Research Station FIA Field Crew received the Director’s Safety Award for continued safety performance while travelling over 650,000 miles and charging over 38,000 hours, mostly for work in field situations.

Sam Lambert received the Director’s Award for FIA Excellence for providing excellent customer service and technical assistance in geo-spatial data handling and data analysis to clients in Government, academia, industry, and other stakeholders.
(Back to summary)