Integrated Inventory

Forest Service programs require a variety of social, economic, and ecological data for planning, analysis, and assessing conditions and impacts from resource management activities. Resource Planning Act and National Forest Management Act legislation mandated that inventories be integrated. Integrated inventories are designed to meet multilevel, multilocation, multiresource, or temporal needs. The integrated focus serves to minimize duplication of data collection and to establish relationships among the resource attributes or variables collected. The use of integrated plots and/or integrated sampling designs improves the efficiency of data collection. Integrated inventories are those designed to meet at least part of the information requirements of two or more resources and are commonly inventories in which integration is preplanned.

The Resource Information Group is responsible for fostering improvements in inventory operations within the Forest Service. Efficiencies can be designed into multiple resource data standards and inventory sampling strategies and survey methods as an inventory protocol is developed. When this is plausible the Resource Information Group coordinates development of integrated inventory protocols. When integration is desired without a foundation of an integrated inventory protocol, field personnel planning, designing, and conducting inventories using an interdisciplinary team of specialists who collaborate on the objectives, standards and methods, and expected outcomes from an inventory project can still gain efficiencies. The Resource Information Group coordinates the development of technical guides that help these field office personnel through the process of planning and conducting integrated inventories.

Integrated Inventory Protocols

• Terrestrial Ecological Unit Inventory (TEUI) Technical Guide: Landscape and Land Unit Scales (PDF, 2.8 MB)
• Existing Vegetation Classification and Mapping Technical Guide
• Fish and Aquatic Ecological Unit Inventories (AEUI)
• Ecological Subregions:Sections and Subsections of the Conterminous United States

Staffs Who Manage Multi-resource Data Collection Programs

The following Forest Service program staffs manage national programs which directly collect data in a highly integrated manner. The nature of their work also ensures that program staff members are well connected to organizations and partners who provide opportunities to collaborate on integrated data collection activities.

• Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA)
• Forest Health Management (FHM)
• Remote Sensing Applications Center (RSAC)

Data Sources

The following are links to either Forest Service staffs or significant federal partnerships. These references access a myriad of social, economic, or ecological data and protocols that may be relevant to assessments requiring integration of inventory data.

• Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA)
• Natural Resource Information System (NRIS)
• Economic Impact Analysis
• HD.gov - a federal partnership for Human Dimensions resources.
• Statistical Techniques for sampling and Monitoring Natural Resources
• A Primer on Integrating Resource Inventories (PDF, 3 MB)

Staff Contact

Jim Keys
Integrated Resource Inventories
U.S. Forest Service Resource Information Group (RIG)
202-205-1580 or