Dr' Dirts analysis of forest site quality in Essex County'

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Dr. Dirts analysis of forest site quality in
Essex County.
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Who is Dr. Dirt?

• Dr. Philip Craul, Emeritus Prof of Soils
• Forest and Urban Soils Expert
• Was given the task to map lands suitable for
  forest management in Essex County in the Eastern
  Adirondacks.
• Funded by Economic Development organizations to
  attract forest industry
• Here are the lands good for forest mgt!
• 1986 one of the first raster GIS analyses
  carried out in NY

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Essex County
Essex

• 1.167 x 106 acres
• 92 forested
• gt50 in preserve

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Criteria for Analysis

• Find forested areas that were
• Highly productive from a forest or biological
  point of view Good Site
• Economically feasible from a land owner or
  forestry contractor point of view
• In locations that minimize impact on people,
  historic sites, and the environment in general.

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Soils Problem

• Soils data, or lack thereof, was a major problem
• After all, that is what trees grow in and so
  soils have to be important
• The cost of moving logs from the stump to all
  weather roads also depends on the roads and hence
  soil
• This was a BIG PROBLEM! ?

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Soil layers Needed

• FOR VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM needed
• Drainage class
• Organic layer thickness
• Soil depth
• Soil texture
• Stoniness

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Productivity Criteria

• Drainage Class
• affects water and air supply
• Partially controls rooting depth
• Influenced by
• Texture --- Parent Material, Soil formation
• Density ------ Parent Material
• Pans ---------- Soil Formation

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Productivity Criteria

• Organic Layer thickness
• affects
• fertility
• Influenced by
• pH
• Nutrient availability
• Vegetative cover type

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Productivity Criteria

• Soil Depth
• Affects
• rooting depth
• Drainage
• Windthrow hazard
• Water storage
• Fertility

• Influenced by
• Parent material
• Topography
• Weathering
• Deposition

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Productivity Criteria

• Texture
• Affects
• Fertility
• Drainage
• Aeration
• Water supply

• Influenced by
• Parent material
• Mode of soil formation

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Productivity Criteria

• Stoniness
• Affects
• Ease of root penetration
• Water flow
• Fertility

• Influenced by
• Parent Material
• Topographic position

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Productivity Summary
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For the soil fertility map

• Dr. Dirt had to look at the landscape and use his
  expertise to estimate fertility from
• Topography topographic position
• Parent material
• Cover type

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Aside

• This was a classic Expert system application
  although it was done with wetware and not
  software
• Years later Dr. Dirt did something similar for
  DOD using software (AI) to predict tractability
  -- he got 80 accuracy overall and 90 accuracy
  if they stayed out of flood plains.
• And that is where the interest in shape of
  Country analysis came from.

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Steps

• Estimate some soil properties from
• Remotely sensed data ?cover type
• Based on fact that different species are more
  competitive on different soils
• Topographic maps ?Topographic position
• Ridge, valley bottom, concave or convex slope,
  top or bottom of slope, etc.

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Cover type ? Soil properties

• White Pine Well-drained, moderately deep,
  moderately fertile, sandy soil
• Walnut Well drained, very fertile loam
• Sugar Maple Moderately well drained, moderately
  deep, fertile silt loam
• Hemlock Somewhat poorly drained, acid, loamy to
  sandy
• Norway Spruce somewhat poorly to poorly drained,
  shallow, poor fertility soils.

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Other layers

• Were derived from looking at topographic maps,
  aerial photos, and satellite images of landcover.
• Craul then estimated the other criteria
• Which were

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Soil Productivity
Layers and weights

• Drainage class
• Organic layer thickness
• Soil depth
• Texture
• Profile type
• Stoniness

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Soil Productivity
Layers and weights

• Drainage class 10
• Organic layer thickness 10
• Soil depth 5
• Texture 10
• Profile type 5
• Stoniness 5
• TOTAL WEIGHT 45

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The other two requirements

• Find forested areas that were
• Highly productive from a forest or biological
  point of view Good Site Got that!
• Economically feasible from a land owner or
  forestry contractor point of view
• Located to minimize impact on people, historic
  sites, and the environment in general.
• The last 2 were combined into Economic Site
  Criteria

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Layers Forest Management

• Cover type forest or not
• Pretty obvious here
• Distance to all weather roads
• Skidding costs, needs for new roads
• Plan compatible
• Zoning are forest operations permitted
• Surface Stoniness
• Operational costs and ease of reproduction of
  forest
• Slope
• Harvest technology

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Layers Forest Management

• Cover type forest or not
• Pretty obvious here
• Distance to all weather roads
• Skidding costs, needs for new roads
• Plan compatible
• Zoning are forest operations permitted
• Surface Stoniness
• Operational costs and ease of reproduction of
  forest
• Slope
• Harvest technology

Buffer
Reclass LU
Reclass Soil
Surface
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Cultural/environmental

• Historical/ Cultural Impact
• Buffers around specific sites ( hamlets,
  historic sites, campgrounds, etc.
• Environmental Impact
• Buffers or polys eliminating
• areas of high soil erodibility,
• wetlands or soggy areas,
• buffers around water, streams.

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Economic Layer Ratings

• Land type 10
• Distance to roads 10
• Plan compatibility 5
• Historic/cultural 5
• Environmental Impact 5
• Adjacent compatible 5
• Stoniness 5
• Slope Class 5
• TOTAL 50

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Process

• Pretty simple similar to site selection
• Combined all Productivity layers by weights
• Combined all Economic layers by weights
• 47 productivity, 53 Economics

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Actually

• The process was more complex than indicated.
• Each of the factors was given a sub-weight such
  that max value was good and minimum value was
  not good
• Then summed and stretched into 5 classes

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Final Analysis Step

• Get rid of areas
• Elevation gt2500 feet (Preserve law, no
  harvesting
• Preserve lands cant do much of anything on
  them
• Lakes
• Make 5 Classes of feasibility
• Most feasible
• to
• Least feasible

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And the result

• Layer showing biological productivity
• Layer showing Economic feasibility
• Remember that
• Highly productive lands that were distant from
  the road network were NOT suitable for management
• Less productive lands next to road WERE suitable
  for management

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Final map showing

• 5 Classes of feasibility (examples)
• Most feasible (highly productive, near road)
• to
• Least feasible (not productive, far from road)
• Areas not available

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So

• Add economics and productivity
• With the classes of elements going from
  unsuitable to suitable the areas with high values
  were the most suitable
• OK, have a map Now what
• Validate!

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Validation

• Made the map weighting Economics 50 to Forest
  Productivity 45
• Showed it to a number of people who were in the
  the business of forest management and/or the
  contracting business.
• They said No Good!
• Because not enough weight was given to the
  economic factors
• Back to the drawing board!

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Bummer!
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Not to worry!
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Try just weighting Econ x 2
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So Now

• Forest Productivity 45
• Economics 100
• Total 145

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When that was done

• Everyone was happy with the result! The Econ
  Develop folks were happy with the map as a way to
  attract forestry businesses
• Even the DEC! Who said they could use the map to
  AVOID adding highly productive land to the
  Adirondack Park and thus avoid damage to the
  economy of the county.

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Next

• Several of us put together a proposal to create a
  forest soils map for the entire 10 million acres
  of the area north of the Mohawk River so that a
  similar analysis could be done for the whole
  area.
• When we figured it would cost someone about 2
  million in 1987 dollars we dropped it.
• To do it now would cost 5 or 6 million!

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