Pacific Southwest Region

Vegetation Inventory

The inventory of existing vegetation on National Forest land provides information for strategic-level planning at the National, Regional, and Forest levels. The Resource Planning Act (RPA) as well as the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), requires the Forest Service to collect vegetation inventory data at periodic intervals, and to report to Congress on the status of forestland resources, and to use this information in the development of both national and forest level assessments.

The Region 5 vegetation inventory program fits within a National program Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA), a systematic sample design to allocate plots across all forestlands regardless of ownership. The Region has augmented the National program by installing plots on all vegetation types, not just forests, and by targeting rare types that require additional samples. The design is intended to provide a baseline vegetation inventory from which long-term monitoring of change (growth, mortality, species composition, etc.) can be assessed. These data are used for a wide variety of purposes, including timber resource status, wildlife habitat assessment, wildfire hazard rating, and monitoring of biological diversity and climate change.

• Data by Forest
• Contracting Information
• Plot Location Confidentiality
• Inventory Designs Past and Present
• Inventory Compilation
• Types of Inventory Compilations
• Inventory Database Dictionary
• Inventory GIS Data Dictionary
• Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS)
• Western Core Table Reports

USDA Forest Service - Pacific Southwest Region
Last Modified: Friday, 13 April 2012 at 13:21:59 EDT