Paul Van Deusen

1
Are FIA data useful for forest certification?
Paul Van Deusen NCASI New Orleans March
4,2009 Le Pavillon Hotel
2
SFI and FSC Call for MonitoringFIA 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

3
Some FSC standards require assessing large
procurement zonesFIA is at the appropriate scale
Applies to companies that procure wood from
non-FSC lands
4
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

5
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 (gt 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.

6
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 lt5 of the management unit in 5
  years, or lt10,000 acres, whichever is smaller

7
Estimating Conversion Rate from FIA data
Eco-region 211 9.2 million acres
Eco-region M211 7.5 million acres, ME
Eco-region 221 1 million acres, ME
Eco-region 232 81 million acres
8
New conversion rate estimator
Submitted to CJFR
9
Maine annual conversion rates
10
Conversion Rates for Maine
Using Gforest and FIA data
Natural Forest in 2000, Red Spruce Plantation in
2005 With DBHlt5 inches
11
PREV_PLT_CN issues

• Missing PREV_PLT_CN injects uncertainty
• Finding forest-to-plantation plots
• New plantation assumed if a STDORGCD1 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 fremvcfalgt0
• -The estimates are preliminary until PREV_PLT_CN
  is available for all growth plots

12
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