Assessing Clearcutting Activities: Calculating visible clearcut amounts

Introduction

How does GIS help you measure and monitor the aesthetics of clearcutting activity in a forest over time?

Clearcutting may have obvious economic benefits, but clearcuts often are ugly, especially when they are large and highly visible, and they remain that way until new trees regenerate and cover the site—usually within five to 10 years.

Most forestry operations are sensitive to the visual impact of clearcuts. In forest areas easily accessed by the public, foresters often attempt to lessen the impacts, typically by creating smaller clearcut openings, avoiding clearcutting adjacent to well-traveled public or forest roads, and limiting or forgoing clearcuts on highly visible hillsides.

Solving this problem is not an easy task, but GIS provides the data and tools to help you succeed. How does GIS do this, exactly?

Location

A small 1,400 ha woodlot in the Acadian-New England forest region of North America

Time to complete the lab

3 hours

Prerequisites

Students should have a basic working knowledge of GIS data, including use of a geodatabase, and ArcGIS software in particular. Some experience with rasters and the ArcGIS Spatial Analyst extension is also beneficial. Familiarity with basic forest analysis techniques is important, while familiarity with forest inventory data and terminology is helpful but not essential.

Data used in this lab

Feature classes and rasters for a small woodlot (personal geodatabase)

Geographic coordinate system: NAD 1983 CSRS New Brunswick Stereographic

Datum: NAD83

Projection: New Brunswick Double Stereographic Grid (unless otherwise stated)