Rocky Mountain Research Station

Software for Land Management Planning

Multiple-resource Analysis and Geographic Information System

GIS Data, and Setup and Solution use of Map Displays

MAGIS requires at least one treatment unit (polygon) feature dataset and one road network (polyline or arc) feature dataset. Polygon data for MAGIS can be either ArcInfo coverages or shapefiles. The polygon coverage is to be attributed with basic vegetation data and with optional 'zones' for management decision-making. There is an optonal second polygon data set consisting of vegetative stands information; this is particularly useful for modeling vegetative change over time. The road network must have topology: it should be a coverage consisting of arcs and nodes, and defined by from- and to-nodes, and includes both existing road segments (links) and proposed links. See our GIS Data information page for more details, including sample dataasets for reference.

     Once the GIS data are imported into MAGIS, they are used to determine adjacency, setup scenarios, and display solutions. For example, the screen displayed below allows the MAGIS user to select treatments to 'set' into solution, leaving the solver free to select additional treatments based on the scenario setup parameters. These map displays and utilities have been constructed using ArcMap technology.

In the MAGIS model, transportation of forest products from their origin to a point on the road network that reperesents a destination (such as a mill), is modeled by connecting the treatment units to the roads at nodes on the network. This is accomplished through a GIS utility in the MAGIS application, that creates a spatially explicit set of 'connections' from the centroid of a selected treatment unit to a user-selected node. These connections are collected into a 'loading point' table, which includes the polygon identifier, the node identifier, a logging system name and the percent of the total output from the treatment unit which is loaded to the node. Additional data in the form of associated tables can include the road options/and costs by link, and traffic costs by link and road option.

View Sample GIS Form

USDA Forest Service - Rocky Mountain Research Station
Last Modified: December 14, 2006
Modified by: Janet Sullivan