GIS Data Analysis and Mapping

With geographic information system (GIS) experts on staff, fountains forestry excels at GIS data collection, analysis, forest land mapping, and spatial modeling. Accurate, detailed, and visually stunning property maps and reports are created for most forest management applications.

Timber cruise data is carefully collected and mapped using GIS applications. Data is attached to a visual map for management, valuation, display, and manipulation for decision making and management planning.

GIS applications and data fields are customized for each client for concise reporting. All GIS data is safely managed and reliably stored. The power inside GIS goes beyond simple mapping. GIS software's powerful analysis capabilities discover hidden patterns, trends, and relationships in the data. Over 80 percent of all data can be mapped and GIS provides the ability not only to map the data, but also to analyze the information in a new way.

Hover mouse over icon to see enlarged map.

Why is good GIS data critical in forestry?

GIS provides the power to fully utilize information and find the geographic relationships between data. Map data can be mined with database queries. Making advanced spatial queries is another new way to extract meaning from data. Using both methods together is what makes GIS able to answer questions such as:

• The aspen market is suddenly very good. Where are the stands with high volumes of aspen that I can access to cut in the next month?

• What is the value of my forest land portfolio in the United States?

• Where is my highest value, ice-damaged timber?

Up-to-date, accurate data is the key to analyzing relationships. The powerful GIS software used by fountains forestry can create new data by aggregating information on a single map. GIS also allows users to analyze complex relationships among the data. As data are added and updated in the database, the data are automatically linked to all map features, providing many levels of information right at the user’s fingertips.

GIS for strategic planning and modeling

Forest management planning involves making forecasts about what the future forest will look like relative to alternative management activities. This ability is crucial to nearly all aspects of management forecasting, particularly long-term wood and wildlife supply. GIS stores both the geographic and numerical structure of the forest stands and links that spatial database to the planning models. It allows the manager to effectively add both the important temporal and spatial dimensions to the management planning process. Within the limits of the inventory and model, the manager can then map what the forest will look like in 5,10, 25, or 100 years in the future.

GIS for harvest scheduling

Spatial forest modeling using GIS technology is essential to planning harvesting strategies. Spatial models use both the absolute and relative geographic positions of forest stands in developing and testing harvesting strategies. Using individual stand locations allows the manager to produce harvest schedules and candidate harvest blocks that are easily translated into maps. Mapping different harvesting strategies lets the manager see the economic impact of the harvest and the impact on nearby wildlife.

Serving New England including Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine; the state of New York;
and much of the Appalachian region including West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

Fountains Forestry Inc., Fountains Land Inc. and Fountains Spatial Inc. are subsidiaries of Fountains America Inc.

© 2008 Fountains America Inc., Pittsfield, NH. All rights reserved.