Pacific Northwest Research Station

Tools

Analyzing climate change effects on wildlife and habitats in the western Arctic, Alaska

This work provides a template and procedure for combining sources of models, data, and expert knowledge pertaining to forecasting climate change effects on hydrology, vegetation, wildlife habitats, and wildlife species.

How to get it: Contact Bruce Marcot, bmarcot@fs.fed.us, Ecological Process and Function Program

 

BlueSky Framework

A modular modeling system that enables fire information, consumption, and smoke modeling. BlueSky modularly links a variety of independent models of fire information, fuel loading, fire consumption, fire emissions, and smoke dispersion.

 

Community Socioeconomic Information System (CSIS)

This tool allows users to retrieve 1990 and 2000 U.S. census data to examine conditions and trends for communities in western Washington, western Oregon, and northern California. The tool includes socioeconomic data for 1,314 communities in the entire region, including incorporated and unincorporated places.

 

Forest Sector Carbon Calculator

This online tool allows users to compare how stores of carbon in the forest and in forest products change over time following forest harvest and wildfire. The calculator is designed to give users a way to compare the short- and long-term effects of different forest management practices, wildfire occurrence, and assumptions about forest product use.

 

Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS)

Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) is a family of forest growth simulation models. The basic FVS model structure has been calibrated to unique geographic areas to produce individual FVS variants. Since its initial development in 1973, it has become a system of highly integrated analytical tools. These tools are based upon a body of scientific knowledge developed from decades of natural resources research. New versions of the Pacific Northwest Coast and West Cascades variants were developed to improve its ability to accurately predict the growth and survival of Oregon white oak.

 

Digital Photo Series

Digital Photo Series (DPS), a web-based project to provide the Natural Fuels Photo Series data in electronic form. Here you'll find data from all 16 volumes published to date with 42 photo series containing a total of 438 sites in database form to enable searching, downloading, and eventually side-by-side comparisons and customized site generation. The DPS diverges from the published volumes both in content and presentation. In many cases we've added more information than was published (e.g., land owner and Bailey's ecoregion), in others, data have been rearranged and terminology (e.g., field names, table headings) altered to standardize among the sites.

 

Hand-Piled Fuels Biomass Calculator

This calculator was developed to help fuel managers and air quality regulators manage hand-piled fuels and coordinate piled-fuel disposal through prescribed burning. By using easily measured dimensions, the user can estimate the volume and biomass of hand-piled fuels and the emissions produced when those piled fuels are burned. The estimation equations were developed from field measurement. The developers presented the calculator at the Joint Fire Science Program Biomass Roundtable, which prompted a request and additional funding to further develop and enhance this tool for fuel management.

 

Incident Command Tool for Protecting Drinking Water (ICWater) v. 3:

This software informs incident commanders and other first responders about risks to drinking water as they mount an effective emergency response. It now includes effects from deposition of toxic materials from airborne plumes and tidal influence on riverflows in coastal areas.

 

NetMap

Now with climate change component

NetMap is a Web-based platform for doing cost-effective, timely watershed and landscape analyses. NetMap contains models that allow the user to conduct analyses on various parameters that influence aquatic ecosystems such as wood recruitment, erosion sources, and potential habitat. It now hosts a climate change component that includes projected changes in seasonal hydrographs, changes in the likely location of snow-to-rain transition zones, and thermal loading.

 

Northern Spotted Owl Dispersal Assessment Tool

This tool is used to assess northern spotted owl dispersal habitat. It has a stand-level habitat quality component based on the Ecosystem Management Decision-Support system. These results are further assessed for connectivity by using customized programming based on graph theory.

How to get it:
Contact Sean Gordon, sgordon@fs.fed.us
Ecological Process and Function Program

 

Production, Prices, Employment, and Trade in Northwest Forest Industries

This online resource offers downloadable data on the current timber situation in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Idaho, and British Columbia, as well as 50 years of historical data. Data sets include lumber and plywood production and prices; timber harvest; employment in forest products industries; international trade in logs, pulpwood, chips, lumber, veneer, and plywood; log prices in the Pacific Northwest; volume and average prices of stumpage sold by public agencies. The extensive data sets can be downloaded into Microsoft Excel®, a commonly-used program. This online version complements the printed quarterly publication by the same name that has been published continuously since 1963.

 

Wildland Fire Air Quality Tools

This new Web portal site centralizes access to a number of air quality tools, making it both easier and faster to obtain information for planned prescribed fires and unplanned wildland fires. The site includes several help features, including a glossary and phone- based technical assistance.

 

Software & Application

BIOPAK

BIOPAK (Means, et al. 1994) is a menu-driven package of computer programs for personal computers that calculates the biomass, area, height, length, or volume of plant components (leaves, branches, stem, crown, and roots) and biomass by fuels size classes using existing prediction equations. Most of the 1150 equations in the equation library currently available as part of BIOPAK were developed in the Pacific Northwest, including southeast Alaska.

BIOPAK User's Guide

 

Consume 3.0

CONSUME is a user-friendly software application designed for resource managers and scientists with some working knowledge of Microsoft Windows® applications. Land managers and researchers input fuel characteristics, lighting patterns, fuel conditions, and meteorological attributes, then CONSUME outputs fuel consumption and emissions by combustion phase.

CONSUME 3.0 is designed to import data directly from the Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS), and the output is formatted to feed other models and provide usable outputs for burn plan preparation and smoke management requirements. Additionally, training and a user’s manual are available. CONSUME can be used for most forest, shrub and grasslands in North America.

 

Ecosystem Management Decision-Support (EMDS) System v. 4.0

EMDS version 4.0 provides integrated, spatially enabled, multiscale decision support for environmental analysis and planning. The basic objectives of any EMDS application are to (1) develop an improved understanding of the state of the environment at whatever spatial scales are relevant to an application area, and (2) assist with design of strategic solutions for environmental protection and restoration.

EMDS 4.0 continues to maintain compatibility with the latest releases of the world’s leading geographic information system technology, ArcGIS. Numerous major system enhancements were introduced at version 4.0 to improve the robustness and usability of the system, and ensure its continued viability for the foreseeable future.

 

Fire Emission Production Simulator (FEPS)

Fire Emission Production Simulator (FEPS) is a user-friendly computer program designed for scientists and resource managers with some working knowledge of Microsoft Windows applications. The software manages data concerning consumption, emissions and heat release characteristics of prescribed burns and wildland fires.

 

FishXing 3.0

This interactive software tool with over 150 new features has been released to assist engineers, hydrologists, and fish biologists in the evaluation and design of culverts for aquatic organism passage.

 

 

Fuel Characteristic Classification System, Version 2.1

The Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS) was designed to build and catalogue fuels, from the ground to the canopy, based on inventory data, photo series, or literature. The system will predict flame length, rate of spread and surface fire behavior, crown fire, and available fuel potential using a 9 point index. Version 2.1 was released in 2010 with refined fire behavior equations and a total carbon calcu- lator. Another improvement includes mapped FCCS fuelbeds for the continental United States.

 

LTERMapS Internet Mapping Application

LTERMapS Internet Mapping Application uses Google Maps technology to provide information on Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites. The U.S. LTER network comprises 26 sites representing a diverse array of ecosystems. With this new tool, users can view current weather at all LTER sites, zoom into individual sites, and view aerial images (provided by Google). The tool provides a consistent interface to brief site descriptions, a photo library, list of contacts, and links to individual LTER site Web pages.

 

My Fuel Treatment Planner (MyFTP)

MyFTP is designed to allow planners working at the level of a national forest district or similarly sized unit to estimate costs, revenues, economic impacts, and surface fuels resulting from operations designed to reduce fuel loads in fire-prone forests. The software is limited in scope to the dry forests of the western United States. MyFTP is a spreadsheet application developed with Microsoft® Excel® 2002. Its compatibility with spreadsheet software other than Microsoft Excel has not been tested. MyFTP has, however, been tested successfully with Excel 2002-2003 and with Excel 2007.

 

SnagPRO (Version 1.0)

SnagPro software analyzes log, snag, and tree densities based on peer-reviewed, scientific sampling protocols. It was specifically developed to analyze log, snag, and tree data in support of sampling methods presented in general technical reports (Bate and others, PNW-GTR-746, and PNW-GTR-780) published by the PNW Research Station in 2008. SnagPRO provides example field sheets for data collection as well as a user-friendly, spreadsheet-based process for data input and analyses. SnagPro also provides recommendations for optimizing sample design (sample size and sample stratification) based on pilot surveys. Finally, SnagPRO provides a wide range of statistical analyses and output to meet a variety of analysis needs.

Database

Quercus Garryana Bibliography Endnote® Database

A comprehensive bibliography for Q. garryana. The citations in the bibliography pertain primarily to Q. garryana; however, some references pertain to geographically associated oaks in southern Oregon and California, Q. alba (an eastern species closely related to Q. garryana), and general information about the genus Quercus. There are 488 citations that refer to Q. garryana, 191 that pertain to geographically associated oaks, 131 that pertain to Q. alba, and 27 general oak citations.