Senior Capstone Design Course Forest Engineering 450

The Senior Capstone Design Course F E 450

The first day you arrive at Pack forest you are faced with a daunting task; to prepare a thorough, professional planning document for an actual forest area. This is to be accomplished using the latest computer planning technology coupled with data collected on the ground in much the same way it has been throughout the history of forest engineering. Much of the knowledge and many of the skills you require to perform this task are already familiar to you, however you are probably less familiar with the process that needs to be followed in order to complete the task at hand. This outline is an attempt to describe, in a cookbook-like fashion, the process followed by previous classes as they worked on their project. It should be understood at this point that the process followed is not the "only" or "right" one and that as with all processes it will change (and hopefully improve) with different problems and as different planning tools become available.

The time constraint you are subject to in this project may seem far to short to complete the amount of work described, especially when a lot of what you will be doing will be in a "learn as you go" environment, but such constraints are common in forest planning. The success of the exercise will largely be a result of the efficiency the planning process provides. This paper (being informal) will include comments on how to be more efficient and avoid many of the pitfalls experienced by previous classes.

Learning -- the ability to drink from the fountain of knowledge; -- except it's a fire hydrant now, not a fountain anymore

Advise #1: get busy right away; as in the first Sunday evening. The first few days will require you to become familiar with both specific information regarding your planning area and with the room and equipment you will be using throughout the project. Assembling a wall map of the planning area and of it's locale is a good first step as it will give you a first look at where you will be and what some of the planning concerns will be (i.e. is it a steep area, how accessible etc.).

Keep in mind the fact that you will need to keep track of maps, tables, field notes, reports, manuals and other hard copy materials and try to set up a system for keeping these organized. Review previous year's reports during the first few days to get an idea of the types of information you will be working with and of what the final report you are ultimately working toward should look like.

....each person is aware of the role they are playing and what requirements they have of the other students and others have of them.

It should be understood that sometimes in the interest of progress it will be necessary to move on to the next step in the process prior to the completion of the current step, or that actions which would usually proceed in a linear fashion must occur concurrently. This problem is awkward to deal with and requires communication between each individual in the crew so that each person is aware of the role they are playing and what requirements they have of the other students and others have of them. Rather than being myopic and only considering the problem immediately at hand each person should strive to schedule the order in which they perform their work in such a way as to facilitate the progress of the project as a whole rather than only their portion. This information flow is essential for combining the actions of the crew into progress toward the completion of the plan. The need for this coordination will become crucially evident toward the final stages of the project.

The need for communication between students to ensure that as information becomes available from one source it is then passed to those who can put it to use.

Start writing the final report right away. This may sound strange, but the introductory sections (objectives, planning criteria and physical resources) can be written as a part of gaining familiarity with the area and of what your objectives are. Early in the project you will be assigned a specific role, which will involve authoring some portion of the final report. You should consider what you want this section to look like and what will be involved in producing it. Starting from this point will help you to remain focused on the final product and to compose as you go rather than waiting till the last few days when your memory of previous events will be becoming hazy. Making notes on procedures and activities you perform as well as keeping a daily log (see earlier daily log for an example of how this can be both useful and fun) of group activities will also help in this process.

Also consider that you will be dealing with a lot of data in the form of computer files. This information will take hours of your time to prepare, modify and work with, and as such deserves care especially with regard to backup copies, maintaining currency of data and avoiding conflicts between duplicate data sets on separate computers. The primary concern with all three of these issues is that the data you are working with should be the "proper data" and not data that has been improperly modified or out-of-date. The results of using the wrong data is time spent on the costly re-analysis of the proper data set. One computer should house a "master" data set which will be updated as the analysis proceeds, and which should be backed up often in order to avoid data loss. A computer log book for each machine in the lab will be available and notes regarding file contents, currency and purpose can be recorded here along with notes on hardware/software problems (and their solution!) and of specific procedures you may develop.

The importance of data organization and of keeping records of how data is stored so that it is easily accessible and understandable even after several weeks of field work.

Prior to the field portion of the project an engineering design is developed for the planning area. Essentially the pre-field work involves collecting and developing data to be used in the design process and preparing an initial harvest design. PLANS is the primary tool used for design, and it is the job of the design team to incorporate as much of the available data into the process. For instance information regarding slope stability and timber type can be used to modify unit design to ensure environmentally sound and economically feasible harvest units. This is one circumstance where it would be preferable to have all the data available before work in PLANS is undertaken, but, due to time constraints the data is often being processed concurrently (i.e. stability information developed using LISA may not be complete prior to initial unit design in PLANS). This situation highlights the need for communication between students to ensure that as information becomes available from one source it is then passed to those who can put it to use.

The DNR corporate GIS is an extremely large database of which you will only be working with a tiny portion. Because of the size of this database the quality of the information for your planning area may or may not be of high standard. This is why the data must be reviewed and understood before further planning continues. The data will typically arrive in ARC export format (.EOO file) and will contain many "covers" including timber types, roads (existing, proposed, alternate), streams, etc. The quantity of data is large and will need to be reduced to the required data in a more useful format for your purposes. This involves "clipping" the data to cover only the planning area as well as sorting the information and building new covers (for instance creating a cover containing only existing roads). Copies of the original data should always be maintained so that information that at first seems extraneous can later be extracted with minimum effort.

Data handling during the pre-field portion of the project requires attention to format and structure. The way that information is stored and handled at this stage will determine how it will be done during the post-field analysis stage. This illustrates the importance of data organization and of keeping records of how data is stored so that it is easily accessible and understandable even after several weeks of field work. Things that seem "obvious" when you are initially working with information will inevitably be obscure after an absence. For this reason make note entry's in your personal log and leave "header' information on computer files describing the contents, their format and the date of last modification. Assume you will not be working with a piece of data again and consider what would be "obvious" to someone picking up your data with no prior understanding of it. If you prepare all your data with this idea in mind the efficiency of the project and the quality of the results will be ensured.

Road pegging is one activity that has not been computerized. This means that the pegger must use her/his own ability for selecting routes which access the proposed landings while attempting to minimize environmental impact. The pegger must consider the available information regarding soil types, slope, UMA's, RMZ's and any areas of special concern (i.e sensitive wildlife areas) and logical routes that result in minimum negative impacts on the forest. It is also essential for the pegger to keep track of the grade being pegged and to make careful note of where grades change. This information is essential for the preparation of field maps and later for road cost analysis and updating of road locations after the field portion of the course. Roads can be draped over DEM's allowing for calculating road lengths between grade changes providing the pegged roads are digitized using grade change locations as nodes.