Stephen Bathgate from Forest research on how implementing a GIS delivered savings and efficiencies to a small workforce. Presented at 6th Scottish QGIS UK user group meeting.

1. Decision
Support Tools
for Forestry
using Open
Source Software
Stephen Bathgate, Andy Kennedy, Duncay Ray, Louise Sing
and Phil Taylor
03 November 2016

2. 03/11/162
Introduction
1. A little bit of history on selecting tree species
2. Decision Support Systems for Forestry
3. Ecological Site Classification (ESC)
4. ESC4 Decision Support System
5. Conclusions and Questions

3. 03/11/163
FC Bulletin 30 (1957)
• Climatic maps covering
temperature, wind speed
and moisture (rainfall
and evapo-transpiration).
• Site prescriptions
according to bioclimatic
zones.

4. 03/11/164
Some of the issues
• During 60s and 70s the principle of matching species to
site was turned around, and some sites were matched
to species with ploughing and fertiliser.
• The advent of Sustainable Forest Management, coupled
with increasing costs, led to a reduction in fertiliser use
in the 90s. Objectives changed away from production.
• Skills and staff were lost.
• Land available for afforestation was often degraded,
poor choices about species potential arose.
• The range of site types, tree species and potential
future climates a forester might need to analyse
required digital data and computer processing.

5. 03/11/165
ESC Bulletin 124
• Following research and
development in the 1990s
national scale guidance was
published in 2001.
• Was complemented by a
computer based decision
support system, field
survey pack and training
course.
• ArcView extension.
• Now embedded in many
aspects of GB Forestry.

6. 03/11/166
Decision Support Systems
1.Tools/models that simplify a complex problem so that
users can evaluate the relative merits of different
management actions.
2. Intended to complement, not replace,
expert/local knowledge.
3. Rubbish in, rubbish out.
4. Uncertainty/error/assumptions in models/data.

7. 03/11/167
What does a DSS do?
• In this context
1. query the properties of a site (climate/soil)
2. analyse those properties with a scientific model
3. return the results to the user.
• The climatic data is usually in raster format
(250mx250m pixels).
• Some models have spatial interactions (e.g. insects
move according to their preferences for certain
sites).

8. 03/11/168
Audience
• Education/outreach
• Researchers
• Private sector forestry
• Public sector forestry (operational/policy)
With such a broad spectrum of users ESC tools
have to be relatively agnostic to technology –
web based tools and paper based systems.

9. 03/11/169
Ecological Site Classification

10. 03/11/1610
Ecological Site Classification
Climatic Factors
-Temperature (AT5)
-Continentality (CT)
-Exposure (DAMS)
-Moisture deficit (MD)
Soil Factors
- Soil Moisture Regime
- Soil Nutrient Regime

11. 03/11/1611
Ardgarten Forest/Cobbler
• Illustrate
topographic
limits on
planting.

12. 03/11/1612
Exposure Index (DAMS)

13. 03/11/1613
ESC Model
AT CT DAMS MD SMR SNR
Climatic factors (raster maps) Soil factors
Species Model
Yield Class Suitability.

14. 03/11/1614
Soil Map – New Forest

15. 03/11/1615
Pedunculate oak – New Forest

16. 03/11/1616
Guiding principles
• When disseminating data/services:
- avoid imposing technical requirements (and
costs) upon end users (e.g. Windows only
desktop tools).
- ensure interoperability of geospatial data and
services across platforms.
• In ESC4 we use web map services (WMS),
GeoJSON, CSV and other open data formats.

17. 03/11/1617
ESC 3.0

18. 03/11/1618
Technology Stacks
Decision Tools
Oracle App.
Server
Oracle
Database
(aspatial)
ArcGIS +
extensions
Decision Tools
PostGIS
Geoserver
R QGIS
Geotools
Tomcat

19. 03/11/1619
Open Source GIS
R with raster plugins to
generate national scale
maps for species potential
QGIS for visualisation,
with qgis2threejs, sld4raster,
quickmapservices
Geotools provides set of libraries to
work with spatial data
(geotiffs/geojson) in Java
OpenLayers3 for integration of
spatial operations on the client side
Geoserver to provide web map
services to desktop and web based
clients.
Geomoose?
Could this simplify the construction
of this type of tool?
PostGIS to store and manage
spatial and aspatial data.

20. 03/11/1620
Design/Open Source Tools
Linux Server
Geoserver Geotools
ESC
Tomcat
Geospatial
Database
PostGIS
Web browser
(HTML/JSON)
Desktop GIS (WMS)

21. 03/11/1621
Use Cases
• Stand (Site) scale (e.g. <15ha), point and click
• Strategic scale, WMS maps, precalculated
results from R scripts etc.
• Operational scale with specific site data (e.g.
soil survey)? Need to batch process large
number of individual sites, e.g. to assess a whole
forest block/design plan area.
- Upload a geojson file based on a soil survey,
process and send back to user so they can
integrate with other design plan data.

22. 03/11/1622
ESC 4

23. 03/11/1623
Forest Design Plan

24. 03/11/1624
ESC Site Analysis
• To create an individual site analysis.
- query 6-20 raster layers for point of interest.
• Execute models based on site data.
• Send results to user (web browser, file download depending on
use case).
• In use cases involving multiple sites this has to be repeated
many times (including zonal stats/centroid derivation of mean
attribute values for polygons).
• PostGIS raster queries slower than Geotools, so far..
• Need to look at alternate approaches, e.g. rather than rasters
create bioclimatic zones as vector data with attributes (loss of
precision)?
• Other ideas?

25. 03/11/1625
Suitability for Sitka spruce

26. 03/11/1626
Silver birch at Loch Ard

27. 03/11/1627
Douglas fir at Loch Ard

28. 03/11/1628
Strathyre – Wind risk

29. 03/11/1629
Next Steps
• All very much a work in progress.
• Refining user interface and working with user
groups.
• Adding other decision tools.
• Optimisation of operational applications.
• Looking at options for open source survey data
collection e.g. QGIS extension.
http://www.forestdss.org.uk/geoforestdss/esc4.jsp
stephen.bathgate@forestry.gsi.gov.uk

30. 03/11/1630
Thank you

31. 03/11/1631
Challenges (some historical)
• Forestry Commission technical strategy based on Oracle technology
and proprietary GIS.
• Learning curve and range of open source GIS tools e.g. GRASS,
Gvsig, QGIS + many others, Mapserver/Geoserver. What to choose?
• Licensing constraints around certain tools and data.
• Developing capacity/capability to support an open source
infrastructure.
• Range of user communities and their expectations.
• Resistance to open source(or change). Security constraints, one tool
per business requirement, concerns over integration and support.
The creation of parallel open source environments was
necessary to workaround certain barriers and prove the
merits of open source.

32. 03/11/1632
Exposure (DAMS)
• Wind exposure index.
• Based upon
topographic exposure
(topex), elevation,
valley funnelling
effects and aspect.
• FR conducted tatter
flag surveys to build
this data.

33. 03/11/1633
Decision Support Systems
Ecological Site
Classification
Local Knowledge
Professional
experience
Other evidence
ESC is part of a decision making process,
it is NOT the decision.
This principle should apply across all
decision support systems.

34. 03/11/1634
Species Suitability

35. 03/11/1635
Site Level Report