Overview

The Challenge

Timmons Group, leveraging a grant from the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities, was asked to assist the Virginia Department of Forestry (VDOF) and Virginia Tech in building and implementing a geospatially-enabled decision support tool called InForest. Landowners and technical service providers currently have few outlets for understanding and evaluating the value of their land and, further, how land management practices can alter water, nutrient and carbon metrics.

The Solution

The InForest application provides a decision support portal for landowners and technical service providers. Various ecosystem models are used in the on-line calculator, including nutrient and carbon sequestration calculators. The calculator for carbon returns current and future estimates, if desired, of the amount of carbon sequestered in a forest stand based on user input of stand information. Carbon estimates are for the total above ground biomass, which includes stems, branches, and foliage, and are in the carbon registries as tradable units of metric tons of CO2 equivalent. The units of measurement provided by these estimates are metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (mtCO2e). This is the unit that is traded in emerging voluntary markets.

The tool uses the Generalized Watershed Loading Function (GWLF) model to estimate both tract level and watershed level nutrient and sediment loading based on the land cover found in the area of interest. Users are allowed to select the land cover composition in the area of interest and run scenarios based on land conversion or land use changes created by management activities to assist in decision making. For example users will be able to estimate how reverting an open pasture to forestland reduces nutrient and sediment loading. A user can also estimate how converting forestland to open land increased nutrient and sediment loading and decreasing carbon.

The portal is built using Esri’s ArcGIS Server technologies and Microsoft Silverlight.

The Results

Landowners and technical service providers are now able to use this decision support website for the creation of areas of interest and generate both nutrient and carbon estimates for their land by providing required inputs such as management practices.