Performing Department
Agricultural Food & Resource Economics
Non Technical Summary
The Spatially Explicit Forest Ecological Assessment (SEFEA) Decision Support Tool is proposed as a decision support system (DSS) to assist forest managers in taking an ecologically optimal approach to multipurpose forest management decisions. SEFEA will be a web-based tool utilizing existing methods and techniques, including data on various forest attributes, a decision tree for selecting options from the possible outcomes of a series of choices, and creating multiple statistical outputs and a mapping interface.SEFEA will be multi-disciplinary in nature, using user-interactive technology with significant linkages to land use change, biodiversity and watershed quality improvement projects. Proposed SEFEA tool would help in evaluating the consequences of management plans for forested landscapes in New Jersey. The project will achieve the following goals:To help management in making socio-environmentally sound decisionsTo determine the human impact on forest ecologyTo provide the variety of spatial scales in forest planning assessmentTo promote awareness of a new decision making tool.The project will employ a user-intuitive approach by incorporating user defined management choices in SEFEA. Management choices within the model structure are based upon what if scenarios and how and where and how long types of scenarios. SEFEA will be based upon existing data inventories and projected scenarios will improve the decision making technological capacity by allowing flexible user interactive system.SEFEA will help forest managers and planners to gain new insights by generating outcomes from a variety of scenarios so that ecologically efficient alternatives and strategies in the decision and planning management process can be evaluated.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
40%
Developmental
50%
Goals / Objectives
The objective is to develop a forest management decision-support tool with a user-friendly interface to advance understanding of the effects of forest-related land use and land cover changes, economic activity, infrastructure, hydrology and biological stressors in the two diverse ecological landscapes of north west New Jersey Highlands and south east New Jersey Pinelands.In particular, the project focuses on the following areas:To help managers and planners assess the consequences of management/planning choices and to inform and enhance the development of environmentally and socially sound and effective management planning strategies.To explore cumulative ecological effects of land use change and anthropogenic activities on forest and watershed scales using an ecosystem analytic approach.Provide an interactive web tool for land managers and planners that allows assessment of multiple land use and policy scenarios at a physiographic spatial scale.Provide outreach to promote awareness of this unique tool to forestry and land management professionals, raise the level of land management and planning in New Jersey, and to be used as a model for other states and regions.An additional year is requested to incorporate changes in forest and agriculture land use due to utility transmission infrastructure and zoning status across land parcels would be implemented in the scenario assessment feature of the SEFEA. Utility right-of-way (ROW) is a strip of land of over and around natural gas pipeline. The existing maintained ROW is 50-feet in width in the New Jersey. The ROW for natural gas pipelines data would be collected from New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and other relevant sources. The 50 ft spatial buffer would be created for the gas pipelines data in the SEFEA tool to evaluate forest health impact. With this additional data, the landscape distribution in baseline and hypothetical future management scenarios would be compared across northern and southern regions of New Jersey.Similar to the forest management areas used in forest planning, locations would be grouped into zoning management areas with socio-economic applets/drivers. Using spatial utilities infrastructure and zoning-based scenarios, spatial changes in species composition, forest patterns, biodiversity and water quality would be assessed using spatial analysis & modelling in the SEFEA web-tool. Future forest ecological conditions in SEFEA based on current and additional projected scenarios would allow for prioritization and targeting of effective management plans. In this regard SEFEA is a tether to the development of School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (SEBS) product NJ Forest Adapt and linkage to climate change hub. With climate change, there are changes in coastal settlement pattern and freshwater allocations and distributions. Therefore, such a tool can provide the infrastructure linkages for land use planning in scenarios linking response to environmental impacts.
Project Methods
The importance of the proposed design was explored in a user-informed instructional systems design (ISD) approach, developed by Center for Remote Sensing & Spatial Analysis (CRSSA) for resilience land use planning and emergency management in coastal decision-making. In the user-intuitive approach, we propose to employ a user collaborative baseline framework and the flexible design structure for an easy adaptation for use in other geographical locations with different decision environments.This tool box will also reflect the decision levels for targeted users at various spatio-temporal scales. We utilize GIS to input user defined location and frequencies (user- time step) to create customized reports that map the spatial consequences of alternative management in terms of forest and land use change and associated impacts on ecological systems. With these reports, managers can identify how various ecological types of forest systems changes under various policy scenarios such as riparian buffers and zoning. This project will utilize the existing inventories, data, and information to simulate management scenarios informed by existing research on forest impacts and wider constructs of the land use processes. The outputs can be deployed for immediate use in this first SEFEA iteration of development. However, the model can be easily augmented for added functionality as other input variables shift and improve with associated research across agencies and universities.Based upon the availability of temporal and spatial FIA data, nine assessment areas are identified for the SEFEA tool: forest biomass, forest composition, forest species, forest density, forest insects, carbon stocks, land use change, economic infrastructure and water quality.Predicted changes in species composition, forest patterns, and biodiversity and water quality will be assessed using simulation models such as the forest transition model, habitat change, habitat quality and quantity and risk assessment models, and watershed pollutant yield models. Anthropogenic infrastructure and environmental factors appropriate to the different types of forest structure will be applied. As the simulation models run through many iterations, they illustrate how and where forest vegetation and other ecological services are expected to change in response to land use changes, disturbances, and forests management activities. The projected outcome of alternative management scenarios will be displayed graphically as well as in tabular summaries. The spatial data from these maps will be summarized and linked to other attributes of interest, such as biodiversity and water quality models. The projections are made on a 1-year or a user-defined multi-year time step (iteration), and the tool will produce maps and summary statistics of forest conditions at each time step of a projection, covering a year or up to several decades. Similar to forest management areas used in forest planning, locations are grouped into management areas that need not be contiguous focused with socio-economic applets/drivers.User-defined management choices in SEFEA are based upon general structure ofwhat ifscenarios. One such example of awhat ifscenario can be a change in land use from one type to another within a one mile buffer surrounding preserved lands. This provides autonomy to the user to select certain defined parameters to assess various outcomes that will be translated into changes of the landscape composition and attributes and determine ecosystem vulnerability in each scenario. Verification, validation and sensitivity analyses will be conducted for each parameter associated with land use disturbance and forest system. The aim of forest management and planning is to optimize forest management choices. This would be incorporated in the tool by includinghow and where and how longtypes of scenarios. These will be implemented with an optimal mix of input and output data that will fulfill the objective of forest management for strategic forestry decision making. Optimization modules containing a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approach will be integrated in DSS of SEFEA and determine tradeoffs and thresholds.Management scenarios are compared based on their values for various forest attributes (= multi-criteria), either at one time period or cumulatively over the simulation period. This allows stakeholders to incorporate their preferences in terms of criteria. Using a benefit transfer approach, empirically determined values for forest attributes from previous studies and previous applications will be used. Prioritizing goals, data acquisition and assessing the present and future state of the forest systems and its resources would help forest managers in assessing their objectives and preferences. Generating alternative management plans for the forest system and projecting their consequences would help in selection of the best alternative.A vulnerability assessment map will be created for the projected scenarios based on the forest change and land use driving parameters from base conditions as well as its impact on ecological system's resilience in terms of watershed and forest health. The primary assumptions of the SAFEA tool are that more and better information and data will lead to improved practices in the regional landscape. It is also built on an assumption that ecological systems can be improved without completely changing the forest and land use regime across the landscape.To assess user needs, the pre-evaluation of the tool to identify the range of important forest parameters will be informed through the participation of forest managers and land use planners through a survey questionnaire. This will be achieved through a focus group workshop that includes a diverse group of planners from each region. The workshop will provide visual information and key facts about these regions and incorporate the panel of experts' knowledge to inform the model and management criteria. This approach will also be helpful in guiding design of the user-interface, structure, and functionality of the assessment tool. The user interface will be evaluated through the workshop/online survey feedback. At the end of the session, users discuss their results with product developers and/or by giving feedback on the SEFEA tool. Based on user feedback the design and structure of the SEFEA tool will be improved.Members of CRL and ORA, respectively, will be responsible for developing the initial assessment tool frame. The Co-PIs will be responsible for developing the 'content' and interpret the simulation and decision making tool. Once the evaluation and testing is completed, the tool will be introduced to a more diverse user group, including environmental managers, forest planning consultants, and forest land-owners through the use of webinar technology. From that point, the wider dissemination to practicing foresters and land use planners will be developed in presentation and electronic media formats. The tool will also be promoted and announced through several forest extension outlets, US and NJ State Forest Service and non-governmental organizations, and professional forestry organizations and publishing in peer-reviewed journals.