PROJECTS

Capstone Design –Field Studies is a quarter-long course, in which seniors develop a management and transportation plan for a land base in cooperation with a forest landowner. The project has gained a new dimension in light of the ongoing shift from a pure timber-production-oriented design paradigm to one driven by goals for superior land stewardship and environmental protection of streams and other resources. (Schiess, Rogers, Jaross)

 

Road Density Reduction – In a project for the DNR, we compared the economic and environmental impacts of reducing road density in a block of DNR ownership in the Eastern Cascades. (Schiess, Krogstad, Rogers)

 

Empirical Landslide Probability – Instead of hazard risk, managers can use existing landslide inventories to predict landslide probabilities and the sediment volume expected from specific harvest boundaries and road alignments. (Krogstad, Schiess)

 

Cumulative Impacts – Developing a GIS framework for assessing the cumulative impacts of landscape scale harvest plans. (Schiess, Krogstad)

 

Road Spacing and Yarding Distance – Developing decision tools to evaluate tradeoffs of road spacing and silvicultural systems as part of long-reach yarding systems. (Schiess, Jaross)

 

GIS-based road access planning – Road layout can be a complicated process. To assist road planning, we have developed an ArcView extension to automate road design and to allow 3-D visualization of the resulting roads. Presented at the 2001 International Skyline Symposium. See the presentation here. (Schiess, Rogers)