Decision Support Tools for Forestry using Open Source Software

Stephen Bathgate, Andy Kennedy, Duncay Ray, Louise Sing and Phil Taylor

03 November 2016

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Introduction

1. A little bit of history on selecting tree species

2. Decision Support Systems for Forestry

3. Ecological Site Classification (ESC) 4. ESC4 Decision Support System

5. Conclusions and Questions

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FC Bulletin 30 (1957)

• Climatic maps covering temperature, wind speed and moisture (rainfall and evapo-transpiration).

• Site prescriptions according to bioclimatic zones.

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Some of the issues

• During 60s and 70s the principle of matching species to site was turned around, and some sites were matched to species with ploughing and fertiliser.

• The advent of Sustainable Forest Management, coupled with increasing costs, led to a reduction in fertiliser use in the 90s. Objectives changed away from production.

• Skills and staff were lost.• Land available for afforestation was often degraded,

poor choices about species potential arose.• The range of site types, tree species and potential

future climates a forester might need to analyse required digital data and computer processing.

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ESC Bulletin 124

• Following research and development in the 1990s national scale guidance was published in 2001.

• Was complemented by a computer based decision support system, field survey pack and training course.

• ArcView extension.• Now embedded in many

aspects of GB Forestry.

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Decision Support Systems

1.Tools/models that simplify a complex problem so that users can evaluate the relative merits of different management actions.

2. Intended to complement, not replace, expert/local knowledge.

3. Rubbish in, rubbish out.

4. Uncertainty/error/assumptions in models/data.

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What does a DSS do?

• In this context1. query the properties of a site (climate/soil)2. analyse those properties with a scientific model3. return the results to the user.

• The climatic data is usually in raster format (250mx250m pixels).

• Some models have spatial interactions (e.g. insects move according to their preferences for certain sites).

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Audience

• Education/outreach• Researchers• Private sector forestry• Public sector forestry (operational/policy)

With such a broad spectrum of users ESC tools have to be relatively agnostic to technology – web based tools and paper based systems.

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Ecological Site Classification

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Ecological Site Classification

Climatic Factors-Temperature (AT5)-Continentality (CT)-Exposure (DAMS)-Moisture deficit (MD)

Soil Factors- Soil Moisture Regime- Soil Nutrient Regime

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Ardgarten Forest/Cobbler

• Illustrate topographic limits on planting.

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Exposure Index (DAMS)

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ESC Model

AT CT DAMS MD SMR SNR

Climatic factors (raster maps) Soil factors

Species Model

Yield Class Suitability.

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Soil Map – New Forest

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Pedunculate oak – New Forest

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Guiding principles

• When disseminating data/services:

- avoid imposing technical requirements (and costs) upon end users (e.g. Windows only desktop tools).

- ensure interoperability of geospatial data and services across platforms.

• In ESC4 we use web map services (WMS), GeoJSON, CSV and other open data formats.

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ESC 3.0

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Technology Stacks

Decision Tools

Oracle App. Server

Oracle Database (aspatial)

ArcGIS + extensions

Decision Tools

PostGIS

Geoserver

R QGIS

Geotools

Tomcat

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Open Source GIS

R with raster plugins to generate national scale

maps for species potential

QGIS for visualisation, with qgis2threejs, sld4raster,

quickmapservices

Geotools provides set of libraries to work with spatial data

(geotiffs/geojson) in Java

OpenLayers3 for integration of spatial operations on the client side

Geoserver to provide web map services to desktop and web based

clients.

Geomoose? Could this simplify the construction

of this type of tool?

PostGIS to store and manage spatial and aspatial data.

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Design/Open Source Tools

Linux Server

Geoserver Geotools

ESC

TomcatGeospatial DatabasePostGIS

Web browser(HTML/JSON)

Desktop GIS (WMS)

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Use Cases

• Stand (Site) scale (e.g. <15ha), point and click• Strategic scale, WMS maps, precalculated

results from R scripts etc.• Operational scale with specific site data (e.g.

soil survey)? Need to batch process large number of individual sites, e.g. to assess a whole forest block/design plan area.- Upload a geojson file based on a soil survey, process and send back to user so they can integrate with other design plan data.

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ESC 4

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Forest Design Plan

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ESC Site Analysis

• To create an individual site analysis.- query 6-20 raster layers for point of interest.

• Execute models based on site data.• Send results to user (web browser, file download depending on

use case).• In use cases involving multiple sites this has to be repeated

many times (including zonal stats/centroid derivation of mean attribute values for polygons).

• PostGIS raster queries slower than Geotools, so far..• Need to look at alternate approaches, e.g. rather than rasters

create bioclimatic zones as vector data with attributes (loss of precision)?

• Other ideas?

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Suitability for Sitka spruce

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Silver birch at Loch Ard

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Douglas fir at Loch Ard

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Strathyre – Wind risk

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Next Steps

• All very much a work in progress.• Refining user interface and working with user

groups.• Adding other decision tools.• Optimisation of operational applications.• Looking at options for open source survey data

collection e.g. QGIS extension.

http://www.forestdss.org.uk/geoforestdss/esc4.jsp

stephen.bathgate@forestry.gsi.gov.uk

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Thank you

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Challenges (some historical)

• Forestry Commission technical strategy based on Oracle technology and proprietary GIS.

• Learning curve and range of open source GIS tools e.g. GRASS, Gvsig, QGIS + many others, Mapserver/Geoserver. What to choose?

• Licensing constraints around certain tools and data. • Developing capacity/capability to support an open source infrastructure.

• Range of user communities and their expectations.

• Resistance to open source(or change). Security constraints, one tool per business requirement, concerns over integration and support.

The creation of parallel open source environments was necessary to workaround certain barriers and prove the merits of open source.

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Exposure (DAMS)

• Wind exposure index.• Based upon

topographic exposure (topex), elevation, valley funnelling effects and aspect.

• FR conducted tatter flag surveys to build this data.

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Decision Support Systems

Ecological Site Classification

Local Knowledge

Professional experience

Other evidence

ESC is part of a decision making process, it is NOT the decision.

This principle should apply across all decision support systems.

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Species Suitability

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Site Level Report