Designating and Managing High Conservation Value Forests

Hawaii HIGICC Geospatial Expo

Forest Solutions, Inc.May 20th, 2014

Tom Baribault, Dustyn Hirota, Willie Rice

Overview

• Hōnaunau: a Forest Stewardship Council Certified Forest

• High Conservation Value Forest Definition• Designation• Management• Monitoring and feedback

Hōnaunau – Forest Stewardship Council Certification

High Conservation Value Forest

Value Description Pertinence

Biodiversity Ecosystems Human

culture Present in HMA

1.

Globally, regionally, or nationally significant concentrations of biodiversity values, including protected areas, rare or threatened species, endemic species, and seasonal concentrations of species.

2. Globally, regionally, or nationally significant large landscape-level forests.

3. Forest areas that are in or contain rare, threatened, or endangered ecosystems.

4.

Forest areas that provide basic services of nature in critical situations, including protection of watersheds, protection against erosion, and destructive fire.

5. Forest areas fundamental to meeting basic needs of local communities.

6. Forest areas critical to local communities’ traditional cultural identity.

Review of available spatial data (2005)

HCVF criteria

HCVF identification procedure

Review of available monitoring data

Plot-level data

Original HCVF Designated Area Representative HCVF Area

Revised HCVF location, 2011

FSC certification requires continual improvement

Google Earth Perspective Map

Spatial Analysis

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Visualization (B-spline)

Ecosystem quality analysis

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• Native vs non-native percent site occupancy maps

• Canopy and understory components

• Individual & aggregated species density maps

Management Objective

Invasive species management in Hōnaunau Forest should result in forests dominated by native species in which sustained exclusion of invasive species can be accomplished with comparatively little effort

Management Plan – 15 years

GPS tracking field work

GPS files

Designating and Managing High Conservation Value Forests