Watershed Forest Management Information System (WFMIS)

Maintenance of a sustainable clean water supply is critical for our future. However, watershed degradation is a common phenomenon around the world that leads to poor water quality. In order to protect water resources, the Watershed Forest Management Information System (WFMIS), was developed as an extension of ArcGIS and is described in this paper. There are three submodels to address nonpoint source pollution mitigation, road system management, and silvicultural operations, respectively. The Watershed Management Priority Indices (WMPI) is a zoning approach to prioritize critical areas for conservation and restoration management. It meets the critical need to spatially differentiate land cover and site characteristics within a watershed to quantify their relative influence on overall water quality. The Forest Road Evaluation System (FRES) is a module to evaluate road networks in order to develop preventive management strategies. The Harvest Schedule Review System (HSRS) is a module to analyze and evaluate multi-year and multi-unit forest harvesting to assist in the reduction of impact on water yield and associated changes in water quality. The WFMIS utilizes commonly available spatial data and has user friendly interfaces to assist foresters and planners to manage watersheds in an environmentally healthy way. Application examples of each submodel are presented. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Software availability Name of software: Watershed Forest Management Information System (WFMIS) Developed by: Yanli Zhang Contact information: The Watershed Exchange and Technology Partnership, Department of Natural Resources Conservation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Tel.: þ1 413 545 4358 Fax: þ1 413 545 4853 Email: [email protected] Availability: free at http://www.wetpartnership.org/software_ downloads1.html Available since: June 2006 Learning materials at: http://www.wetpartnership.org/ softwareapps.html Software required: ArcGIS 9.0 and up with Spatial Analyst extension.