GRS Awarded BLM Alaska Forest Inventory Serivces Contract
November 12, 2015 - For Immediate Release
Geographic Resource Solutions (GRS) was recently awarded a 5-year Blanket Purchase Agreement by the Bureau of Land Management, Alaska (BLM ALaska) to provide forest inventory and mapping services. In awarding this contract, BLM Alaska recognized that the integrated field inventory and mapping methodologies that GRS has developed can be used in forest inventory applications to estimate and map tree volume and biomass, in addition to the species-specific canopy cover, fire fuel, and plant association/alliance type mapping similar to the results GRS produced during the Galena Forest Biomass Inventory and Planning Project and the Tonsina Valley Forest Inventory and Mapping Projects. In addition, GRS will also be producing species-specific stand lists by dbh class for all mapped stands as well as Fire Fuels estimates for FWD 1-, 10-, 100-hour fuels as well as for CWD estimates by decay class.
The first area to be inventoried and mapped will be approximately 5.25-million acres of remote wildlands situated in the Kuskokwim River drainage extending westward from BLM lands just southeast of McGrath downriver to west of Lower Kalskag, a distance of over 200 miles; included in the area will be BLM lands along Stony River to the southeast of Lime Village and along the Aniak River to the south of Aniak. GRS will map all lands to Viereck Vegetation Classification Level IV types and will develop forest inventory estimates for all forested lands. Natural resource inventory information to be developed will include tree density, size, and height characteristics; canopy cover estimates; species volume and biomass estimates; and fire fuels woody debris counts and tonnage by fuel size and decay class. GRS will use a combination of their very accurate and detailed field data collection methodology in combination with their Discrete Classification Mapping Methodology to develop this resource inventory information. The development of these different types of resource information should provide a solid comprehensive foundation of information for future BLM Alaska planning and management efforts regarding these remote lands.
Additional areas planned for subsequent mapping in the upcoming years of this contract will be the Dalton Highway Management Corridor (2018-2019) and major portions of BLM's Central Yukon District (2020-2021).
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About Geographic Resource Solutions:
GRS, located in Arcata CA, was founded in 1989 to provide natural resource information development and consulting services. Such services include natural resource inventory, mapping, analysis, and modeling. GRS is known for their Discrete Classification Mapping Methodology, an approach that enables the mapping of species-specific cover as a continuous value, as well as for the GRS Densitometer, a cover sampling field inventory tool. Since 1989 GRS has inventoried and mapped over 50-million acres of wildlands in California, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest.
For More Information
Ken Stumpf
Director, Resource Management Applications
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707-822-8005
