Sixth Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) Conference

The Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) Conference took place March 7-9, 2023 in Fort Collins. CO. It was the 6th FVS Conference, the series dating back to the first conference in 1997. There were close to 90 attendees at the conference, with participants ranging from federal land management agencies, State/local Agencies, Universities, tribal, timber industry, carbon consultants and other non-governmental agencies.  Attendees were from across the US, and a few participants from Canada. The three days were filled with 29 presentations and 2 panel discussions. The presentations ranged from the use of FVS at the stand level to large landscape level projects; projects showed management effects and time on fire risk, carbon, wildlife habitat or more traditional stand metrics like volume and density. Presentations also included the use of FVS through the standard interface, as well as FSVEG Spatial Data Analyzer and using FVS through the R-FVS API. The R-FVS provides advanced users more flexibility for connecting to other programs and processes outside of the standard user interface. Presentations also covered evaluation and validation of the FVS models. The two panel discussions focused on Carbon and Future FVS Development. There was significant interest in ways to continue including the latest science in FVS; finding ways to keep the FVS code as Open Source (to allow for collaboration in development); as well as discussions on how to provide continued support for such a widely used model.

A link to the Conference Proceedings will be posted here once published.