Forest Planning Studio (FPS)
ATLAS was developed at the University of British Columbia by a team headed by Dr. John Nelson. The design team included Tim Shannon, Ralph Wells, Mark Hafer, and Dr. Glenn Sutherland, with programming by David Gizowski. In it’s most recent release, ATLAS is has been renamed FPS — Forest Planning Studio.
The ATLAS Modeling Process Briefly Described
The basic data inputs are a GIS map (including polygons with stand characteristics) and growth and yield curves (describing how the merchantable volume in each stand will change over time). The modeler applies silviculture systems, and minimum rotation ages to each polygon, and seral stage objectives and harvest objectives to the forest. Runs are done with variable time step intervals; at each time step, polygons are first ranked according to a cutting priority (e.g. oldest first). Polygons are then harvested from this queue subject to constraints designed to meet forest level objectives (e.g. opening size and seral stage targets). Polygons are harvested until either the queue is exhausted or the periodic harvest target is met. At this stage the forest is aged to the next time period, and the process is repeated. At each time period, the model reports the status of every polygon in the forest estate. These periodic inventories can be quickly displayed with a map viewer to assess harvest patterns and/or exported to other landscape models for further analysis (such as SIMFOR). Road construction, length of active road, and other indicators of road network activity related to the harvest schedule are also reported.
