OREGON—There is no single correct approach to managing a forest or grassland. Each decision maker must weigh the ecological complexity of these ecosystems, the changing environmental conditions and the uncertainty about long-term consequences. Good information can, therefore, be extremely useful.

But information is becoming more abundant, expertise is increasingly specialized and problems are getting more complex. At the same time, as an agency, we are turning more and more to shared stewardship and the need to restore resilience to respond to major stressors like climate change across whole landscapes. At broad scales, the complexity of information quickly becomes overwhelming.

This is where decision support systems like the Ecosystem Management Decision Support system can be a lifesaver. EMDS is a freely available framework for spatial decision support, composed of a suite of analytical engines integrated with geographic information systems. It can integrate huge volumes of fragmented multidisciplinary data and bring it into focus so that decision makers can evaluate landscape conditions in a consistent, repeatable manner across the country. By modeling ecological integrity at the landscape scale, for example, it provides the “coarse filter” lens defined in the 2021 Planning Rule.

Developed at the Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, EMDS was first released in 1997, and continues to evolve through a consortium of partners under Mountain View Business Group. Major new features are now available through the release of EMDS 8.6.3.5, with more new platforms on the way. These new features include the ability to import and export projects and publish them to the web, enhanced charting capabilities, and Bayesian network modeling. Later this summer, EMDS will be available for the first time as an extension to QGIS and as a web service that runs on multiple cloud platforms (Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and the Google cloud).

The ability to evaluate multiple resource outcomes across unique future management scenarios is becoming essential. EMDS is one of the few tools that has demonstrated major successes in this area over the past two decades. It is best known for its use in environmental analysis and planning. For example, a partnership in the Lake Tahoe Basin recently used EMDS to evaluate how five alternative management strategies over the next 100 years might perform and then determine how best to improve forest ecosystem resilience.

It is also currently being used in the national Terrestrial Condition Assessment. The primary goal of the TCA is to assist land managers with identifying forest restoration needs at national, regional and forest scales. TCA lead Sarah Anderson said, “EMDS generates really valuable information. It gives us the ecological integrity context across landscapes by bringing together and synthesizing all these different datasets to make an overall assessment of condition. It can be especially useful during the preplanning assessment stage to help forest planners get at the broader trends.”

Robust, transparent and meaningful decision support can provide much needed clarity on specific resources, management impacts, and overall trends in landscape condition. EMDS helps break through the confusing haze of information overload and increasing specialization, giving us the big picture view we need to successfully plan for a resilient future.

What is EMDS?

Ecosystem Management Decision Support is software used to develop and run decision support applications for environmental analysis and planning. Its modeling tools can be used to conduct objective ecological assessments by integrating diverse kinds of data such as in-channel habitat indicators, forest health data, wildfire hazard potential and upslope vegetation.

Key features of EMDS include a transparent analysis process, consistent interpretation of data, identifying gaps in data and research needs. EMDS is an extension of ArcGIS and can be used to conduct assessments at any geographic scale.

Uses include:

• Assessments of current ecological conditions
• Assessments of changes in condition over time at any spatial or temporal scale
• Estimations of a proposed management activity’s impact, including the magnitude of impact
• Prioritization of restoration efforts and data collection