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Track: Forestry
Rei Liu
Virginia Department of Forestry
PO Box 3758
Charlottesville, VA 22903
Telephone: 804-977-6555
Fax: 804-296-2369
E-mail: liur@hq.forestry.state.va.us
Forest Land Use Assessment with GIS in Virginia
Defining Issue: State forestry agencies need information on where and how timber management could be effectively practiced. This is especially important for targeting forestry assistance services and related strategic planning. GIS Solution: The ArcInfo GIS was used to perform spatial analysis and identify the primary "rural" forestlands and "urban" forestlands sState-wide. The GIS operations include spatial union, erasing, map joining, buffering, and so forth. Methodology: GIS technology allows foresters to overlay population density data with forest land cover and land use data to identify the impact of population growth on the forest land. The expert opinions of local Department foresters were then used to choose threshold population densities that could be used to separate forestlands into two categories: "rural" forestland, which is likely to remain available for long-term timber production; and "urban" forestland which is likely to become unavailable for timber production through residential or
other development at least by the time the existing forest reaches economic maturity. Areas of rural forest unsuitable for harvest because of steep slopes, small acreage, or distribution in narrow strips were removed from consideration to leave the "suitable rural forestland" that is expressed to support future commercial timber production in Virginia. This paper demonstrates a method to use GIS in the State to identify forest resource availability information and to recommend the ways for the State forestry agencies to use this information in better managing their forest resources. Software: UNIX ArcInfo and ArcView were used to process a large database for the spatial analysis and produce Statewide maps. This project is exploratory in nature with a primary focus on developing analysis tools useful for Sate-wide forest resource management.
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