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A well-planned and up to date forest inventory is essential in all aspects of forest management. IRM has extensive experience in inventory design, implementation, and analysis.
Our services are flexible to account for a variety of client needs and budgets. We have developed basic inventory systems for small family woodlands up to complex systems, which combine inventory, grade cruising, and habitat measurements for large forest ownerships. IRM can collect a full range of inventory data including: tree type, snags, downed wood, understory vegetation, fuels, and roads.
When linked with a Geographic Information System (GIS) a forest inventory can be combined with other data layers (fuels, roads, buffers, etc.) to allow integrated approaches to forest management. For example harvest scheduling can then be planned to mitigate negative effects on wildlife, riparian, recreation, and visual resources.
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Using GIS and ortho rectified imagery, IRM can accurately delineate (A) and type (B) forest stands.
The maps were used as part of a comprehensive inventory project of Willapa National Wildlife Refuge in Washington |
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(A) Stand delineation map (B) Stand typing map |
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The power and functionality of the forest inventory is realized through use of integrated inventory software. IRM uses the Forest Projection System (FPS), Landscape Management System, Assisi integrated forest inventory, growth and yield models, and harvest scheduling programs to compile and analyze collected data. Once manipulated, forest inventory data can be graphically displayed using the Stand Visualization System (SVS).
Services
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Variable Plot Sampling
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Permanent Plot Layout
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Grade Cruising
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Timber Appraisals
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Habitat and Stand Typing and Delineation
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Plant Community and Site Productivity Mapping
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Snag/Downed-wood Inventory
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Road Inventory
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Erosion Source/Fish Passage Assessment
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Ellsworth Forest Inventory Design and Implementation, The Nature Conservancy
The Ellsworth Creek Preserve is a 7,000 acre coastal temperate rainforest in Southwest Washington, recently purchased by The Nature Conservancy (TNC). IRM worked closely with TNC to design a forest inventory that provides a range of natural resources data to effectively manage this forest landscape toward mature forest conditions using an active sustainable forestry approach.
Fieldwork for the forest inventory, completed in Fall 2004, is fully integrated with a range of forest models to allow growth and landscape effects of thinning, and calculation of optimum harvest schedules. The forest inventory will be formatted for use with the Landscape Management System and the Stand Level Inventory Program. |
Plot layout for the Ellsworth inventory using IRM's custom plot design software. |
Stand Level Inventory, Oregon State Lands, Oregon Department of Forestry
Since the Spring of 2003, Integrated Resource Management has installed approximately 18,000 non-permanent forest inventory plots for the Oregon Department of Forestry. The Stand Level Inventory program provides valuable data that helps state foresters make science-based management decisions.
IRM has collected data on the Tillamook, Clatsop, and Sun Pass state forests. Overall work quality has been consistently high, with an average of 97.1% across all collected data fields. Forest stand maps are created by managers in the state office in Salem, and distributed to IRM field technicians' through company project managers.
Each stand contains on average 19 plots, generally in one or two cruise lines across the topography of the stand. Each plot contains a variable cruise plot for pole/sawtimber, (2) fixed-radius seedling/sapling plots, a fixed-radius vegetation survey, and a 100-foot down wood transect.
Major tree data components include species, height, percent crown, canopy class, percent and type of defect (including disease, rot, and physical damage), and wildlife use. Analysis of the data will reveal how the forest, at the landscape level, is changing over time, and will assist in the consistent management of the forest given the changing environmental and resource conditions.
Current Vegetation Survey, Bureau of Land Management
IRM was retained by the BLM to install over 104 permanent forest inventory plots on BLM lands located throughout western Oregon. Similar to the USFS CVS design, the BLM-CVS requires the installation of the Sample Points using real-time GPS. All vegetation was measured including seedlings, pole, saw, and old-growth timber, indicator species, plant associations, down and dead woody material, cover types, and snags.
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IRM specializes in collection of non-timber data such as down woody debris being measured on the BLM CVS project. |
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