The ECOFIA Initiative

ECOFIA Ecological approach to  Forest resource Inventory and Analysis.

What is ECOFIA?

FIA's measurement strategy has shifted toward more holistic assessments with advancing technology and evolving objectives of the program's clientele, e.g., 1993 FIA/AVHRR Forest Type Map.  Refer to http://www.fia.fs.fed.us/ for maps or other contact information.

In 1993, FIA staff scientists launched an initiative to accelerate the shift toward holistic assessments that support ecosystem management, a concept increasingly adopted by land management agencies, corporations, and individuals. The goals of the initiative are to better utilize the historic information wealth captured by FIA surveys, provide support for standardized national appraisals, and explore new inventory designs to estimate vegetation composition, structure, and processes at the species, community, and landscape scales. This initiative is now known as "ECOFIA."

Progress So Far
A Steering Committee comprised of one member of each regional FIA and the Washington Office assembled for a start-up meeting at the Intermountain FIA Unit in Ogden, Utah, November 1993. The meeting resulted in an action plan and a white paper describing the initiative.

After circulating the white paper and gathering review comments, the committee convened a National Information Needs Workshop in Portland, Oregon, May 1994. Attended by an array of FIA's clientele, attendees made presentations on their use of inventory information and emphasized what they felt could be changed or added to the inventory to satisfy their needs. No sideboards were put on the discussions and many viewpoints were offered. Once presentations were complete, attendees grouped and summarized suggestions.

After the meeting, Steering Committee members further synthesized comments into a Portland Summary. Members met again in September of 1994 and drafted a set of recommendations covering inventory, design, and operational issues. Recommendations then went through a thorough internal review. Scientists, inventory and data processing staff from each regional FIA had the opportunity to provide comments and suggest revisions.

With the internal review complete, draft recommendations are being circulated to over 500 individuals and organizations with a stake in FIA information. External reviews will be compiled into a book of comments to assist in finalizing recommendations for a national FIA program.

ECOFIA has added members to the Steering Committee to represent the interests of the National Forest System, serves as a subgroup within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP), and has a liaison role with related US Government ecological monitoring efforts.

Related Developments
There are other ongoing developments that will have significant impact on Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) activities. Perhaps the most important is the current administration's Reinventing Government Campaign.

First, the Department of Agriculture, along with the Forest Service, is on the leading edge of reinvention. The current proposals for reinventing the Forest Service call for major realignments of regional boundaries and leadership staffing.

Second, an umbrella organization within Forest Service Research is being created to integrate all of the Forest Service's inventory activities. FIA is expected to have a leadership role in the new entity.

Another idea discussed is linking the FIA program with other federal inventory efforts, particularly the Natural Resource Conservation (formerly Soil Conservation) Service's National Resource Inventory, much closer in the past. FIA is also expected to expand ties with the Department of Interior's National Biological Survice (NBS). As with the other developments, the full impact on FIA activities is currently unknown. Details on reinvention have not been worked out, but the current plan calls for implementation within two years.

Draft Recommendations
Recommendations contained herein will enhance the ecological basis for forest inventory and monitoring conducted by the USDA Forest Service's Forest Inventory and Analysis Program (FIA). The recommendations list inventory items or processes that can be:

1. handled immediately at minimal cost, termed data elements, and
2. accomplished with additional research, termed research needs.

VISION STATEMENT: To conduct research to inventory, classify, and monitor the vegetation of ecosystems with trees at multiple spatial and temporal scales in a scientifically credible and consistent manner across the Nation. Data are well documented and accessible.

The Top Priorities: Consistency and Compatibility
The central concept of recommendations is that implementation of a "core" set of consistently defined, measured, compiled, and analyzed data elements is the most fundamental requirement for success in taking an ecological approach to our national inventory. Although FIA's timber-related measurements are not emphasized here, we recognize that timber resource attributes are integral to FIA's mission and need to be reviewed for relevancy and consistency among FIA regions as new approaches are implemented.

We recommend 8 standards to ensure operational consistency and compatibility:

1. National standard field measurements and manuals.
2. National standard sample location design and sampling intensity.
3. Wall-to-Wall coverage with a focus on all land with trees.
4. Geo-reference all sample locations.
5. Uniform coding - tie to the Federal Common Survey Data Structure project.
6. Inventory at the interface of land with trees and land without trees needs to be worked out with the relevant authority.
7. Implement and document national "Quality Assurance/Quality Control" methodology consistently for all regions.
8. Units need to stress the temporal, long-term research aspects of FIA surveys, i.e., conduct remeasurements of permanent sample locations and maintain all historical data in modern formats.

Inventory Design

Remote Sensing & GIS - Phase I

Data Elements:

• Earth cover by broad life form (use Federal Geographic Data Committee standards, e.g. tree land, shrub land, and grass land).
• Land use.

Research Needs:

• Stratification - appropriate stratification for ecological inventories.
• Image Processing - opportunities and methods for linking spatially explicit FIA data to mapped data.
• Methods to quantify forest fragmentation (patchiness/connectivity).
• Methods to address other landscape-level issues (e.g. distance from water, roads, degree of remoteness, and accessibility).

Field Measurement - Phase II

Sample location

Data Elements:

• Land cover.
• Land use.
• Slope.
• Aspect.
• Elevation.
• Ownership.
• Moisture class.
• Terrain position.
• Geographic coordinates.
• Forest type (use conventions developed by FIA's forest type committee).
• Stand age.
• Stand origin.
• Percent canopy cover.
• Stand diameter class (seral stage, stand condition class).
• Disturbance class.
• Stocking (use conventions developed by FIA's stocking committee).
• Condition classes (use conventions developed by FIA's condition class committee).

Research Needs:

• Vegetation profile (life form).
• Assessment of site productivity.
• Classification of hydrologic conditions (lake, stream, swamp, etc.).
• Identification of riparian zone.
• Pertinent soil variables.
• Regeneration adequacy (pre- and post-disturbance).
• Evidence of human use/intrusion.

Species

Data Elements:

• Live Trees.
  • Species (tally all "tree" species without regard to commercial status based on species, as opposed to size or form).
  • Remeasurement (e.g., reference distance and direction (azimuth) to individual trees) for log-term monitoring.
  • Diameter at breast height.
  • Total height.
  • Tree history.
  • Crown ratio.
  • Crown class.
  • Type of damage.
  • Severity of damage.
• Dead/Cut Trees
  • Species (same comment as above).
  • Diameter at breast height.
  • Total height.
  • Tree history.
  • Decay class.
• Tree Seedlings
  • Species (same comment as above).
  • Total height.
  • Number of stems.
• Live Shrubs and Vines
  • Species.
  • Height.
  • Percent cover.

Research Needs:

• Woody debris data collection methods: size, amount, and condition.
• Herbaceous plant species sample methodology.
• Consistent biomass estimation technique and associated sampling scheme for shrubs, vines, and herbaceous plants.

Processing and Analysis

Process Elements:

• Institutionalize a standardized compilation algorithm.
• Establish a new national database and documentation containing core data elements.
• Coordinate with the RPA Assessment Team on alternative tables containing ecological elements for:
  1. What we can do right now with the existing data,
  2. What we would suggest to be added to the RPA Assessment,
  3. What the standard set of FIA tables could be and should be in subsequent assessments.
  4. Institutionalizing the analysis of human communities with forest resource assessments, e.g., providing forest resource estimates along the urban/rural gradient or in association with human population density.

Research Needs:

• Explore ecological classification system standards beyond traditional USFS and FIA forest cover types, e.g., ecological community type, habitat type, etc.
• Develop methodology for analyzing land use change (possibly a matrix approach with land-use categories on the axes).
• Determine appropriate measures and techniques to assess biodiversity.
• Examine potential for developing "sustainability" indicators using FIA data.
• Examine linkages between humans and vegetation (e.g., urban forest continuum, owner and user surveys, field evidence of uses, etc.).
• Develop capability to express change elements (inventory, growth, removals, and mortality) in biomass units.

Marketing Strategy

Recent FIA Publications
ECOFIA Steering Committee. 1993. An ecological approach for the inventory, analysis, and monitoring of the Nation's forests. White paper available from steering committee members. 8 p.

For 1976-2001 citations using FIA data, see the bibliography project. For recent citations selected for their ecological content and written by FIA staff or associated with FIA data uses, click here. For information about how to subscribe, obtain paper or electronic copies of FIA Resource Bulletins, other publications, or other programs of the USDA Forest Service research institutes, see: http://www.msstate.edu/dept/forestry/USDAFSresearchpubs.htm

ECOFIA Contacts: To comment on this home page, click here.
Links to Other Monitoring/Inventory WWW Sites
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Compiled by Vic Rudis.