Paul Van DeusenNCASI

New OrleansMarch 4,2009

Le Pavillon Hotel

Are FIA data useful for forest certification?

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

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 23281 million acres

Eco-region 221 1 million acres, ME

Eco-region 211 9.2 million acres

Eco-region M211 7.5 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 2005With 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