About GIS and Forestry
Today, managing forests is becoming a more complex and demanding challenge. With GIS, foresters can easily see the forest as an ecosystem and manage it responsibly. The examples below illustrate how you can use GIS for forest management.
You can use GIS to
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Inventory and Visualize Current Conditions
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With a GIS you can inventory and display current timber stands, water bodies, roads, railroads, and ecosystems and use this information to assess harvest options, transportation costs, or critical wildlife habitats.
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Assist in Strategic Management Planning
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With a GIS you can determine the future of a forest based on different conditions and management scenarios.
Based on these forecasts, you can see what the forest will look like and if there will be sustainable wood supplies to meet demand.
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Assess Old Growth Forest
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By using satellite imagery in conjunction with GIS feature data, you can determine where old growth forest stands are and how many exist. This information can be used to model the effects of current and future harvesting.
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Manage Forest Harvesting
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GIS is used by the University of Vermont and the USDA Forest Service to determine the "allowable sales quantity" for U.S. forests in Vermont.
With the GIS, they can determine how much timber can be harvested by modeling silviculture considerations, wildlife habitat,
visual quality, and access to timber.
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