West Arm Demonstration Forest Case Study

The first case-study application of Prognosis EI used a 3,300 hectare study area in the West Arm Demonstration Forest (WADF) near Nelson, BC (see figure at left). This area is located on the north side of the west arm of Kootenay Lake. It includes the complete Redfish Creek watershed and two adjacent face units.

Due to variation in soils and current forest cover, the study area included 496 distinct ecological areas for which initial sample tree lists were required. These were obtained by a combination of field sampling and a statistical process in which areas that have not been field sampled are assigned tree-lists from the most comparable sampled areas. The initial 496 ecological areas were subsequently divided as required to simulate each management regime. In total, runs were conducted with either 699 stands or 1321 stands.

The case study considered 21 alternative scenarios. These included patch-cutting and partial-cutting scenarios of interest to the WADF working committee, as well as more extreme scenarios (e.g., no management, or implementation of large clearcuts) used to test model behaviour. These management scenarios were simulated under various assumptions, including both with and without the presence of root disease, recurrent underburns, snag retention, and snag poaching.

Each of the scenarios was assessed as to its impacts on the different indicators, and Greenough et al. (1999) [PDF - 3.3 mb] have summarised some of the findings.