Paul Van Deusen NCASI New Orleans March 4,2009 Le Pavillon Hotel Are FIA data useful for forest certification?
SFI and FSC Call for Monitoring FIA data may be at the wrong scale for this SFI Objective 1 – To Broaden Implementation of Sustainable Forestry Indicator 1 mentions having a forest inventory, monitoring harvest trends and calculating growth. FSC Principal 8 – Monitoring and Assessment From US Forest Management Standard (Draft, Nov 2008) C8.2 Forest management should include the research and data collection needed to monitor Growth rates, regeneration and condition of the forest. Records must adequately verify that sustainable harvest levels are not being exceeded
Some FSC standards require assessing large procurement zones FIA is at the appropriate scale Applies to companies that procure wood from non-FSC lands
Company Policy (for FSC members) The company shall have a...policy...to avoid trading and sourcing wood (that is) (only listing items that might be relevant to FIA) harvested in forests where high conservation values are threatened by management activities; harvested in forests being converted to plantations or non-forest use;
FSC rules on forest conversion This applies mainly to procurement from non-FSC lands There is no net loss AND no significant rate of loss (> 0.5% per year) of natural forests and other naturally wooded ecosystems such as savannahs taking place in the eco-region in question. In other words: The rate of conversion from forest to either non-forest or plantations must be less than 0.5% annually within the eco-region where you procure wood.
FSC rules on forest conversion This applies to company owned lands as opposed to the eco-region they procure from (US Draft Standards) Forest conversion to plantations or non-forest land uses shall not occur,...except... (where it) entails a very limited portion of the forest management unit “limited” means <5% of the management unit in 5 years, or <10,000 acres, whichever is smaller
Estimating Conversion Rate from FIA data Eco-region million acres Eco-region million acres, ME Eco-region million acres Eco-region M million acres, ME
New conversion rate estimator Submitted to CJFR
Maine annual conversion rates
Conversion Rates for Maine Using Gforest and FIA data Natural Forest in 2000, Red Spruce Plantation in 2005 With DBH<5 inches
PREV_PLT_CN issues Missing PREV_PLT_CN injects uncertainty Finding forest-to-plantation plots New plantation assumed if a STDORGCD=1 plot had removals dominated by species that are not STDORGSP This could be wrong if the plantations species changed e.g. hardwood plantation converted to softwood plantation Finding forest-to-nonforest plots COND_STATUS_CD!=1 and fremvcfal>0 -The estimates are preliminary until PREV_PLT_CN is available for all growth plots
Conclusions FIA data can be useful for evaluating forest certification guidelines. Especially for procurement organizations FSC conversion rate guidelines would be impossible to assess without FIA data A new conversion rate estimator was developed specifically for use with FIA data PREV_PLT_CN is a critically important variable