Integrating GIS into Forest Resources Spatial Management and Planning (2) – Forest Resources Spatial Management and GIS

This article is summarized and concluded from articles as follow:
(1) Making GIS Work in Forest Management by Manij Upadhyay, unpublished work.
(2) A Hierarchical Approach to Spatial Forest Planning by Ugo Feunekes and Andrew Cogswell, USDA Forest Service, Proceeding
(3) HCVF/A Identify Within Ecoregion; Integrating Conservation Planning into Regional Spatial Planning by Barano Siswa Sulistyawan, WWF Indonesia,
(4) Assessing participatory GIS for community-based natural resources management: claiming community forests in Cameroon by Michael K. McCall and Peter A. Minang, The Geography Journal Volume 171 No.(4) pages 283-306, 2010

Previous Section Integrating GIS into Forest Resources Spatial Management and Planning (1)

Forest Resources Spatial Management and GIS

Integrating GIS into Forest Resources Spatial Management and Planning (2) — Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is an information technology that has been used in public policy-making for environment and forest planning and decision-making over past two decades (Pradhan, 2008 and Bassole et al., 2001). GIS integrates hardware, software, and data for capturing managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information (ESRI, 2008). This makes GIS an important tool in decision-making during policy formulation, planning, and management (Upadhyay, 2009).

GIS is a good tool of the Forest Management because it answers the following question that helps in Forest Management Activities.

1. Location – What is at ?: Location of forest resource in the earth in many ways such as a place name, post or zip code, or geographic references such as latitude and longitude.
2. Condition – Where is it?: non forested land of certain size within certain distance from road or river etc.
3. Trends – What has changed since?: It helps to find out what has changed within study forest/Land use an area over time.
4. Patterns – What spatial patterns exist? Determine whether landslide in forest area.
5. Modeling – What if ? Determine what happens, if a road net work is added in a forest.

The use of GIS in forestry, especially for spatial management and planning can be classified into four group of major application areas. All of the applications are compiled by literature review. The major areas of application of GIS in Forest Management are given below:

1. General Management and Planning
   1. In Forest Resource Assessment and Monitoring
   2. In Preparing a Forest Working Plan
   3. Spatial Databases for Forest Management
   4. Participatory Forest Management planning
2. Protection and Conservation
   1. In Forest Rehabilitation
   2. In Forest Protection
   3. In Forest Conservation and Biodiversity
   4. Wildlife habitat conservation and planning
   5. In conservation of soil and watersheds, and wetlands
   6. On Climate Changes
3. Production and Harvesting
4. Community and Social Forestry

There have been a significant number of applications of GIS in forest management. GIS will maximize its benefits to forestry if it is used for operational decision-making aside from the research-saturated applications. As follows, together we can see the integration of GIS into forest resources spatial management and planning including productive, conservation, and social aspect.

Integrating GIS into Forest Resources Spatial Management and Planning (3) — A Hierarchical Approach to Spatial Forest Planning to Create Harvest Blocks (Case study of Remsoft)

 

Remarks:

You can download the full paper in PDF at the end of the lecture series.

*Geo-information for Spatial Planning and Risk Management — Batch 6 — Faculty of Geography, Gadjah Mada University*

*Intended to fulfil Spatial Planning lecture task*