Acronym: | Stands for: | What it is: |
A-S (A-bar-S) |
Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest | Az/NM prototype study area for the Integrated Landscape Assessment Project wildlife habitat, fire and fuels, and treatment finances modules. Multi-ownership landscape in eastern Arizona. |
ARRA | American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 | ARRA is an economic stimulus package enacted by the 111th United States Congress in February 2009. The Integrated Landscape Assessment Project is one of many ARRA funded projects. |
BPS | Biophysical Setting | Used by LANDFIRE to represent the vegetation that may have been dominant on the landscape prior to Euro-American settlement and is based on both the current biophysical environment and an approximation of the historical disturbance regime. |
CVS | Current Vegetation Survey | CVS contains plot data analogous to FIA, but is conducted only on US Forest Service lands. These plots are somewhat older than FIA, as they were discontinued when that program filled the need for plot data describing forest conditions within the USFS. |
COLA | Central Oregon Landscape Area | OR/WA prototype study area for the ARRA fuels project climate change modules. Multi-ownership landscape in central Oregon. |
CWLA | Central Washington Landscape Area | OR/WA prototype study area for the Integrated Landscape Assessment Project wildlife habitat, community economics, fire and fuels, and treatment finances modules. Multi-ownership landscape in central Washington. |
EMDS | Ecosystem Management Decision Support system | EMDS is an application framework for knowledge-based decision support of ecological assessments at any geographic scale. It is designed to help inform managment decisions. |
FCCS | Fuel Characteristic Classification System | FCCS is a software application that allows users to record fuel characteristics as fuelbeds and analyze fire potential of wildland and managed fuels. |
FIA | Forest Inventory and Analysis Program | FIA reports on status and trends in forest area and location; in the species, size, and health of trees; in total tree growth, mortality, and removals by harvest; in wood production and utilization rates by various products; and in forest land ownership. FIA plot data is used by GNN and FCCS. |
FRCC | Fuel Regime Condition Class | FRCC is an interagency, standardized tool for determining the degree of departure from reference condition vegetation, fuels and disturbance regimes. Assessing FRCC can help guide management objectives and set priorities for treatments. |
FRCS | Fuel Reduction Cost Simulator | FRCS spreadsheet application is public domain software used to estimate costs for fuel reduction treatments involving removal of trees of mixed sizes in the form of whole trees, logs, or chips from a forest. |
FVS | Forest Vegetation Simulator | FVS is the USDA Forest Service's nationally supported framework for forest growth and yield modeling at the stand level. |
GNN | Gradient Nearest Neighbor | GNN integrates plot and spatial (GIS) data, including satellite imagery, to map detailed attributes of forest composition and structure across large, multi-ownership regions. Current vegetation is derived from the GNN raster dataset. |
HUC | Hydrologic Unit Code | National watershed delineation system used by the USGS based on surface hydrologic features. The Integrated Landscape Assessment Project utilizes hydrologic unit code 5 (HUC5). HUC5's generally represent watersheds between 50,000 and 150,000 acres. |
IMAP | Interagency Mapping and Assessment Project | IMAP builds shared data, models, and analysis tools for broad to fine-scale landscape analysis and planning, and fosters interagency cooperation and collaboration on important landscape management issues. |
IMAPUG | IMAP User Group | IMAPUG provides overall project oversight on the IMAP and the Integrated Landscape Assessment Project for Oregon and Washington. |
LANDFIRE | Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Project | LANDFIRE is a multi-partner project producing consistent and comprehensive maps and data describing vegetation, wildland fuel, and fire regimes across the United States. |
MRLC | Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium | MRLC Consortium produces four different land-cover databases (LANDFIRE, GAP, C-CAP, NLCD). The mapping efforts are not duplicative: all three use the same basic methods and data, and mapping done in one project supports the other two. The primary source of data for all three mapping efforts is Landsat (TM). |
MLRA | Major Land Resource Areas | MLRAs contain natural resource information for the U.S. MLRA boundaries are developed from state general soil maps. The MLRA map is designed to be used for national, regional and multi-state resource appraisal, planning and monitoring. |
MTBS | Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity | MTBS is a multi-year project designed to consistently map the burn severity and perimeters of fires across all lands of the United States from 1984 - 2010. |
PAG | Plant Association Groups | PAGs are vegetation types that are nested within the National Vegetation Classification System. Logically, they are aggregations of the NVC's plant associations, and represent plant associations that fall within similar environments, and may even represent different points along successional trajectories within a given type of vegetation. This classification system is a work in progress, and may vary somewhat from place to place. It is more precise than PNV, and can generally be crosswalked to PNV fairly cleanly. |
PATH | Newly developed user-interface for VDDT models. With PATH, a user can run multiple VDDT models at one time. | |
PNV/PVT /PNVT |
Potential Natural Vegetation/Potential Vegetation Type/Potential Natural Vegetation Type | These terms are used somewhat interchangeablly to refer to a coarse classification of potential vegetation. Potential vegetation is basically a quasi-climax concept. A good definition might be that PNV = the vegetation that would result in a given environment (includes soils, climate, natural disturbance regime) in the absence of human intervention. These types are mapped spatially for our project, and each one is linked with an individual VDDT model. |
PVT | Potential Vegetation Type | PVT's typically represent the climax vegetation for a location given natural succession. In the VDDT models, PVT's represent growth rates, disturbance regimes, and responses to management. PVT's are used to link specific locations (i.e. pixels) to a specific VDDT model. |
STM | State and Transition Models | STMs simulate changes in vegetative composition and structure across landscapes under different disturbance regimes and management scenarios. STM's are composed of a series of boxes (states) and arrows (transitions). VDDT is the STM software used by the Integrated Landscape Assessment Project. |
VDDT | Vegetation Dynamics Development Tool | VDDT is a state and transition modeling tool that simulates changes in vegetative composition and structure across a landscape under different disturbance regimes and management scenarios. VDDT models represent both various states (combo of tree diameters & density, canopy layers, and cover type) and transitions to move between states. Each VDDT model contains its own set of growth, natural disturbance and management transitions. |