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Charter
Background
The Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program of the USDA Forest
Service has established tens of thousands of georeferenced forest
inventory ground plots across the entire United States. For details
on the goals of FIA, data collected, and selected publications,
please refer to http://fia.fs.fed.us/
and http://fia.fs.fed.us/library.htm
(program fact sheets). In addition to the biological data collected
on each FIA plot, geographic location is collected using a global
positioning system (GPS).
In the FY2000 Consolidated Appropriations Bill (PL 106-113), Congress
included language that modified the Food Security Act of 1985 (7
U.S.C. 2276(d)) to add FIA data collection to a list of items requiring
confidential treatment. (For a link to the Privacy
Law, click here.) Among other things, the law prevents FIA from
disclosing sample locations in such a way that individual land ownership
can be determined, and it provides for criminal penalties for violations.
We feel strongly about our privacy policy because we need to protect
landowners’ privacy, and we must avoid attracting activities that
might intentionally or unintentionally affect the composition of
the plot and alter the results of our inventory.
Our privacy policy has the effect of restricting access to an invaluable
database consisting of millions of georeferenced measurements of
trees and ecological conditions collected from across the entire
country. We have therefore established National FIA Spatial Data
Services to facilitate outside use of our data while protecting
the confidentiality of the sample locations. National FIA SDS exists
to integrate spatial data such as satellite images, Geographic Information
System (GIS) data and other spatial information with the FIA plot
database. The National FIA SDS staff will be available to fill
data requests involving multiple FIA regions, and to fill requests
delegated to it by individual FIA regions. Examples of such requests
include but are not limited to:
- Combining satellite or other pixel-based data with the FIA plot
locations and returning to the customer FIA plot data associated
with a given raster map category (e.g., performing accuracy assessments,
collecting training data, or helping inform environmental models);
- Summarizing FIA plot information inside of user-defined polygons
such as watersheds, management units, political boundaries, or
other areas of interest;
- Aiding in ecological modeling using raster or vector data layers
supplied by the customer.
Mission Statement
The National FIA Spatial Data Services function is to connect geospatial
information submitted by interested parties with geospatial information
from the confidential FIA plot location database and return information
to the customer that both meets their research or analysis needs
and follows the confidentiality laws set out by the Congress of
the United States. We believe that the FIA data should be widely
accessible, and we seek to facilitate the distribution of the information
to academia, government agencies and the public at large in a secure,
timely and accurate manner.
Facilities
The National FIA SDS is located at the Northeast FIA Unit office
in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, and is staffed by experienced GIS
analysts who are familiar with FIA data. The staff have access to
both a UNIX workstation and Windows 95/2000 PC’s with ArcView, Arc/INFO
and associated modules, ArcGIS (including Spatial Analyst, Network
Analyst, 3-d Analyst and others), Erdas Imagine and various spatial
analytical software packages. Additional software, supplied by the
requester, may be loaded as needed provided the requester has obtained
appropriate licensing.
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