The Virginia Department of Forestry Improves Land Management with ArcGIS Server


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Fall 2006

ESRI

The Virginia Department of Forestry Improves Land Management with ArcGIS Server

GOVERNMENT MATTERS

By Mindia Brown
Virginia Department of Forestry

There are more than 15 million acres of forestland in Virginia that require sound management if long-term protection and sustainability of this resource are to be ensured. To this end, the Virginia Department of Forestry (VDOF) regularly provides private landowners with professional forest management advice and assistance in implementing practices such as aerial spraying, prescribed burning, and tree planting. It also assists landowners with cost share to subsidize expenses related to implementing a practice, such as planting seedlings after a harvest, and through seedling sales that facilitate this reforestation. Last year alone, VDOF assisted landowners by developing management plans that covered more than 147,000 forested acres and helped renew more than 80,000 acres through tree planting.

Historically, however, the agency’s mechanism for tracking information about these activities has been to input very simple data (e.g., planting—pine—50 acres) into a tabular database. Sometimes a paper map was drawn and stored at the county office in a filing cabinet as an accompaniment to the activity, but these maps were not readily available to anyone outside that office. This method has limited efficiency and usefulness in terms of preserving the rich geospatial history of forest management in Virginia.

Recognizing this deficiency, VDOF began developing a centralized, Web-based enterprise information system in 2004 that integrates GIS functionality to map a time series of forest management activity and forest stand conditions. This Integrated Forest Resource Information System (IFRIS©) allows VDOF staff, who often do not have GIS experience, to go online and edit geodatabases that store geometry of forest management activity areas and existing forest stand type/condition attribution. Users navigate to the property of focus, and using 2002 one-meter resolution true-color aerial photography as a guide, map (heads-up digitize) the forest management work that is being or will be performed. The information enables the agency to track employee accomplishments toward individual, strategic, and grants-matching goals.

IFRIS makes it possible to map the forest management history of properties in Virginia, which (1) helps VDOF’s local foresters track activities on their customers’ land, (2) allows VDOF to track accomplishments for matching grants and against strategic goals, and (3) builds a rich spatiotemporal dataset that supports decision making both inside and outside the agency.

IFRIS uses ArcGIS Server, ArcSDE, and ArcIMS software to facilitate the creation, editing, validation, storage, and management of spatial data elements. The enterprise information system operates on a Microsoft SQL Server database platform.

ArcIMS is the presentation interface, but it is the incorporation of ArcGIS Server that allows VDOF to fully integrate GIS feature collection into the enterprise and deliver true geodatabase feature editing tools via the IFRIS Web application. Since the majority of users are in approximately 100 isolated offices without access to the VDOF network, the Web-based ArcGIS Server application is the best way to deliver editing tools to users.

Polygon editing tools include adding/deleting, splitting, merging, appending to, and cutting. There are also more advanced tools that include “exploding” a multipolygon feature into its component pieces, creating a “convex hull” to derive a polygon boundary from selected polygons, and creating interior (island) polygons. Basic point- and line-based editing was also developed. In addition to mapping areas that represent work performed, users have access to a library of annotation layers that they can add to such as roads, streams, structures, and labels. And to complement heads-up digitizing data entry, IFRIS was built to allow data captured in the field using GPS to be uploaded into the IFRIS geodatabases.

ArcGIS Server allows IFRIS users to split polygons by simply selecting the feature to be edited, then drawing the split line. All editing tools were kept simple because most IFRIS users have had little, if any, exposure to GIS.

In addition, ArcGIS Server allowed VDOF to build a centralized application that doesn’t suffer from the data lag issues that its decentralized (periodically merged) legacy database application suffers from. The introduction of IFRIS significantly streamlined data collection workflow, eliminated the use of five paper data entry forms, made data available more quickly, and improved data quality.

Compared to the decentralized desktop solution VDOF was initially considering, the estimated cost savings with ArcGIS Server software are $80,000 in software and development costs, $14,000 per year in software maintenance, $35,000 in training facilities, and more than $35,000 per year in system administration.

VDOF contracted with the Timmons Group (an ESRI business partner headquartered in Richmond, Virginia) for the application development, infrastructure design, and configuration. VDOF hosts the system at the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) facilities and has undergone a thorough security review as part of this arrangement.

Over time, the extent, occurrence, and types of forest management activities will change. As users modify the mapped features, IFRIS preserves geospatial history through automatic archival of “parent” features and their attributes. This will enable VDOF to re-create not only the forest management activity history but also the change in forest types and conditions through time.

FRIS has been deployed for full operational use, and VDOF expects that statewide mapping of forest management activities by its field foresters will result in a much richer dataset than the agency and its customers have ever had access to. It will enable field staff to make better assessments of how landowners should manage their resources with respect to short- and long-term goals. The mapped data will also permit regional and statewide spatial analyses relative to other spatial units such as watersheds, stewardship priority areas, and economic impact zones.

VDOF is poised to begin further IFRIS development to incorporate field-based mapping and data collection using handheld PCs with integrated GPS. This technology will make it easier for field staff to capture data describing the location and nature of wildfire incidents, water quality, harvest inspections, forest health observations, and other critical data. The existing IFRIS mapping interface will then let all agency users interact with all business data for a comprehensive view of program activity. The timely, accurate, and readily available database that will evolve via IFRIS will help VDOF communicate the state of Virginia’s forests to all those who need or want to know.

For more information, contact Mindia Brown, Virginia Department of Forestry, at Mindia.Brown@dof.virginia.gov or Lowell Ballard, Timmons Group, at Lowell .Ballard@timmons.com.