North American Forest Database Project Patrick D. Miles 1 and W.Brad Smith 2 1 Northern Research Station, United States Forest Service, 1992 Folwell Avenue, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA, 55108; 1-651-649-5146; pmiles@fs.fed.us 2 Washington Office, United States Forest Service, Attn: SPPII, W. Brad Smith, Stop Code 1119, 1400 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, DC, USA, 20250-1119; 1-703- 605-4190; bsmith12@fs.fed.us Key words: forest database, North America, FAO, ecoregion Introduction The North American Forest Commission (NAFC) is one of six regional forestry commissions established by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The NAFC provides Canada, Mexico, and the United States with a forum for discussing and addressing regional policy and technical forest issues. Among the commission s objectives are 1) to increase scientific and technical collaboration and consistency in national inventory, monitoring, and assessment among the three countries; and 2) to foster compatible approaches to forest inventory, monitoring, and assessment. The commission s Forest Inventory and Monitoring Working Group recognized that these two objectives could be advanced by the development of a North American Forest Database (NAFDB). The working group met in Washington, D.C., in September 2008, to discuss the goals and guidelines of the NAFDB project. The primary goal of the NAFDB project was to develop a database for reporting on the status and trends of North America s forests by FAO ecoregion. This would be an initial step toward simplifying reporting across national boundaries using a consistent set of variables with common definitions. At a minimum, the database should be able to produce tables 1-4 and 6-8 of the Country Reports (Food and Agricultural Organization 2009) for Canada, Mexico, and the United States as requested by FAO for the 2010 Global Forest Resources Assessment (Food and Agricultural Organization 2006). Materials and Methods A review of data requirements for reporting tables 1-4 and 6-8 of the FAO Country Reports was conducted by forest inventory and database experts from Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Because variable definitions in the database must conform to FAO definitions, each country was expected to harmonize its data to FAO definitions. For example, the FAO definition of growing-stock volume includes both the bark and wood of a tree, but the United States definition of growing-stock volume includes only the wood. Consequently the United States was expected to adjust its growing-stock volume data to include bark so as to conform to the FAO growing-stock volume definition.
All three countries use a grid approach to sampling and record the latitude and longitude of their field plots. FAO ecoregion boundaries for North America were assigned to each field plot by overlaying field plot location coordinates on a polygon shapefile of ecoregion boundaries in a geographic information system (GIS). Several database software packages were considered for hosting the NAFDB. Initial development was begun using Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle, but development efforts soon turned to Microsoft Access since this database software was available to developers in all three countries. There were no mapping requirements specified by FAO but the ability to map results was viewed as essential for verifying the validity of the data in terms of geographic location. MapWindows GIS Open Source is a free, extensible, GIS. The MapWinGIS ActiveX control can be added to a Visual Basic Application within Microsoft Access. Results Database design The database was designed to meet the minimum reporting requirements established by the Inventory and Monitoring Working Group with the flexibility to meet future reporting needs. Inventory data from each of the three countries are grouped by ecoregion (and several other classification variables), summarized, and stored in the NAFC_SUMMARY table. The NAFC_SUMMARY table contains information needed for reporting forest area, volume of growing stock, aboveground and belowground live tree biomass, and forest carbon in live trees (aboveground and belowground), litter, soil, and dead wood. The NAFC_SUMMARY table also contains information on ownership, land use, management objective, primary use designation, regeneration method, and protected status. Six lookup tables (Table 1) were created to provide the ability to report more descriptive column and row headings in English, French, and Spanish. Table 1. Lookup tables for multilingual column and row headings. Lookup table name Contents NAFC_COUNTRY_LU Country identifier NAFC_ECOREGION_LU Ecosystem region identifier NAFC_LANDUSE_LU Land use identifier NAFC_OWNERSHIP_LU Ownership identifier NAFC_PRIME_DESIG_LU Primary function or management objective. NAFC_FOREST_CHARACTERISTICS_LU Regeneration method, native or introduced.
Growing-stock volume information is stored in two categories (broadleaf and conifer) in the NAFC_SUMMARY table. Table 6 of the FAO Country Reports requires reporting of the 10 species with the greatest volume. To accommodate this requirement, an additional database table (NAFC_SUMMARY_SPP_ECOREGION) was constructed to retain information on growing-stock volume by species and ecoregion. An additional lookup table (NAFC_GENUS_SPECIES_LU) was created to allow reporting of species common names in English, French, and Spanish. NAFC Mapper The NAFC Mapper is a reporting tool stored as a form object within a Microsoft Access database. The NAFC Mapper produces both tabular reports and maps generated using the MapWinGIS ActiveX control. The NAFDB was populated with test data and initial runs of the NAFC Mapper were conducted to verify both the quality of the data and the functionality of the reporting tool. A screenshot of the data inputs required by the NAFC Mapper, for reporting aboveground live tree biomass for the United States, is provided in Figure 1. Tabular output for the run depicted in Figure 1 is provided in Table 2. Figure 1. NAFC: Ecoregion Forest Inventory Mapper.
Table 2. Live tree aboveground biomass (average metric tonnes/hectare) by FAO ecoregion and ownership class for the United States, 2007. Ownership Private business entities and institutions Indigenoustribal communities Ecoregion All owners Public Individual Local communities Other All ecoregions 32.7 37.15 57.31 81.65 77.97 16.36 7.18 Tropical rainforest 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Tropical moist deciduous forest 8.37 61.98 59.73 84.01 5.11 36.97 0 Tropical dry forest 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Tropical shrubland 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Tropical mountain system 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Subtropical humid forest 54.23 123.09 98.54 87.24 100.32 98.14 0 Subtropical dry forest 32.1 46.64 14.66 142.62 91.41 0 42.34 Subtropical steppe 12.8 19.4 30.1 27.1 23.58 11.01 0 Subtropical desert 2.91 3.25 4.76 6.93 9.8 1.68 0.04 Subtropical mountain system 75.98 95.86 35.72 90.49 80.79 57.14 86.43 Temperate oceanic forest 91.65 132.93 62.25 102.09 140.84 80.9 81.83 Temperate continental forest 48.72 100.11 107.26 96.86 119.42 94.74 1.68 Temperate steppe 4.34 18.43 14.81 45.67 66.32 9.76 0 Temperate desert 6.36 8.09 2.47 11.95 30.78 3.64 2.55 Temperate mountain system 79.25 91.14 65.55 95.29 106.42 60.18 59.37 Boreal coniferous forest 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Boreal tundra woodland 22.47 21.94 0 21.94 0 21.94 31.45 Boreal mountain system 6.21 6.21 0 6.21 0 6.21 0 Polar 1.19 1.17 0 1.17 0 1.17 2.59 Water 7.31 4.27 53.98 100.75 96.26 88.36 0 Discussion The NAFDB meets increasing demands for global and regional reporting. All three countries in North America will be providing data to the FAO for the 2010 Global Forest Resource assessment. Country reporting of Montreal Process Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management will also be conducted by Canada (Canadian Council of Forest Ministers 2006), Mexico (Informe de Mexico 2003) and the United States (USDA Forest Service 2004). The United States and Canada are also cooperating in the development of Lake-wide Management Plans (LaMPS) as called for under the Canada- U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. LaMPS include an analysis of the heavily forested watershed of the Great Lakes. The development of a North American Forest Database will increase the reliability and consistency of these and any other regional and global reporting efforts.
There likely will be many other potential uses of a North American Forest Database. At some point it may prove useful to create a web-application to replace the NAFC Mapper. This would permit dynamic updating of the NAFDB based on the most recent forest inventory data. It would also allow anyone with Internet access to query the database. Conclusion The NAFDB is a simple summary database that could be used by any country conducting a national forest inventory. Because all three North American countries have harmonized their data to FAO definitions for Country Reporting, as part of the Global Forest Resource Assessment, it becomes a relatively trivial task to combine the harmonized data into NAFDB summary database format. Data for the NAFDB is currently summarized at the FAO ecozone-level, however, data could have been summarized at any geographic level including at the individual plotlevel. Summarizing data at the plot level would make it possible to incorporate sample tree data into the database. The process of combining data into a single harmonized database results in the generation of additional metadata and information on the methodology used in the harmonization process. A single harmonized database also provides additional reporting opportunities through the use of tools such as the NAFC Mapper. Literature cited Canadian Council of Forest Ministers. 2006. Criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management in Canada. Nat. Res. Can. And Can. For. Serv. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2006. Global forest resources assessment: 2005 progress towards sustainable forest management, FAO Forestry Paper 147. Food and Ag. Org. of U.N., Rome, IT. 352 pp. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. 2008. FRA 2010 - country reporting process. http://www.fao.org/forestry/45515/en/ Accessed June 8, 2009 Informe de Mexico. 2003. Proceso de Montreal aplicacion de los criterios e indicadores para el maneho forestall sustentable. http://www.rinya.maff.go.jp/mpci/reppub/2003/2003mexico.pdf Accessed June 8, 2009 USDA Forest Service. 2004. National report on sustainable forests 2003. FS-766. U.S. Forest Service, Washington, DC. 139 pp.