Preface

The Trevey (sounds like "peavey," the logger's tool, or "Tree-vy") is a system being designed and developed.The Trevey staff is continually attempting to understand and be responsive to the entire relevant world, often called the ecosystem. Such natural systems have only four major parts. Knowing these four big, fundamental, but related (and often overlapping) components and continually working with them and their relations are the major tasks within this large and complex system.

Dirt The lithosphere including geology, rocks, minerals, topography, geomorphology, glaciation, and soils Water The hydrosphere including recipitation of all types and amounts, dew, fog, fog-drip, runoff, wetlands,groundwater, and soil moisture Air The atmosphere including air, smoke, air pollution, ozone, climate, weather, and wind effects Life The biosphere with all forms of life, human and otherwise, including all plants and animals and microorganisms

The strongly-related components of all natural resources are employed in the system. These are:physical (trees, rocks, water - the energy and matter) as well as changes over time, being in the right place (space), and having some variety or diversity.

The Trevey is a system designed to help landowners, developers, and others to understand their forests and related rural lands and their relationship to them. It is conceived as an enterprise within Rural System. The enterprise, a system, is composed of staff, facilities, computers, and software. It's main component, however, is the quest for producing for landowners and managers a powerful planning aid and assistance for making complex natural resource decisions. When well developed, The Trevey will integrate data from the field with knowledge gained from research and elsewhere, process and analyze it, select best alternatives using various optimization procedures, and produce a personalized, site-specific document, a hypertext, for the owner or manager. It is planned that that document be continually changing and instantly available via the Internet for realistic decision-making. The end is modern, sophisticated natural resource management. A major premise is that to sustain profits or net benefits from the land and resources, then people must sensitively manage land. The Trevey provides assistance in doing just that.After gaining new understanding, then we may together develop modern sophisticated plans for improving productivity, satisfactions, and profits from the land over many years.

We all have a question...

How do we use what we now know about the rural lands, domesticated and wild, what we are gaining from research and related development, all in the context of a host of legal, financial, and other limits? How do we use it so that we know and can assure visitors and owners that we are achieving superior benefits? The answer is in The Trevey of Rural System.

The Trevey may also help agencies and regulatory groups understand landowners and how to assist them in becoming a part of the invaluable wildland and other rural resources of a region. These areas provide many very important services and roles, provide products, and may offer new potentials.

A sweeping global view of the need for forest management and conservation, is presented in Philosophy: The Roots of Lasting Forests System and Management. Laws have prompted detailed ecosystem analyses, and a library of thoughtful writers are responding to the importance of forests and the need for their care and management.

The program addresses one of the Principles of the Forest Stewardship Council (#5) encouraging

"...the efficient use of the Forest's multiple products and services to ensure economic viability and a wide range of environmental and social benefits."

New hardware, software, and concepts allow a computer program called The Trevey to be developed that can be used to add strong components to farm plans, particularly a wildland. This project seeks to use the best concepts from previous TVA work on the WRAP system, work for the US Department of Defense, and new knowledge bases and algorithms to provide a superior decision assistance and decision support for land owners.

Importantly, The Trevey concept is not only directed to individual forests or farm tracts but also to the region. Increasingly, a broad, landscape view is being recognized as both needful and useful. Preserved forests, both public and private, will serve as one framework (but only one) within which other ecological, esthetics, economic, and energetic considerations and land use decisions occur. The linkages of land and fish, of grass and air, of birds and tropical forests are now widely recognized. No act on the land is singular any longer. Each act affects other people and other lands. This recognition motivates Rural System staff and encourages efforts to select the best areas for preservation while not creating restrictions that result in significant statewide or regional net economic loss or significantly reduce future development potentials. The areas that may be preserved blend ecological and human needs, perpetuate a broad spectrum of values and services, all the while reducing future ecosystem restoration costs. Around and adjacent to these areas, superior, profitable, comprehensive long-term forest and land management is practiced.

In Maryland, as an example of related interest, citizens passed the Maryland Forest Conservation Act (SB-224) along with county- and municipal-level forestry regulations, making existing forest condition and character become an integral part of the site planning process for land development. Prior to getting grading permits approved or erosion and sediment control plans, applicants must provide information on the condition of the existing forest and provide a plan for conserving the most valuable portions of the forest. The Act requires that a forest stand delineation be submitted and then forest conservation plans be submitted later in the development process. The Trevey attempts to assist in meeting those needs in Maryland, but also to respond to a diverse, changing set of laws, rules, and information needs throughout the mid-eastern US region.

A report called TheTrevey is presented to you after the tract has been delineated with its forest stands (composed of Alpha Units) and other areas. The report is produced by The Trevey System. The report is available both on the Internet at a web site and as a paper document. The report is from a word processor system having very common elements but when they are selected and combined with the characteristics of a particular tract of land, a unique report results. Landowner objectives are often unique and thus no one gets an average report (which, on average, seem inappropriate). The report is a combination of selected information, computer simulations, and computer optimization. The results, besides information, is a set of practices and schedules that if taken will achieve the landowner's objectives, given the resources of the area and the owner. If changes occur (e.g., fires, storms, land sales or purchases) the report can be revised and new optima computed for the revised system.

The Trevey Elements are the textual pieces of the system being prepared and revised. They are the chapters or units of the book for an owner or a unit of land. Each element casts light on needed elements. Each helps participants see The Trevey concept and the direction of the yet unfinished system. The Elements are presented here so that they may be used in other ways (education, research suggestions, partial plans, etc.) and improved.

A singular, generic system may produce a unique book (one rarely produced on paper because of its size and because it is readily seen at a web site in color) for each management area or unit. The electronic or internet book is like a good newspaper, out-of-date tomorrow. The Trevey shifts the emphasis from the plan to a planning system, a computer-based entity being continually updated, revised, edited, expanded, and made more interactive than the day before. An entire book may be obtained by the landowner, but chapters, tables, figures, and maps may also be retrieved from a computer screen or page printer. Ancillary products such as photographs of seeds or slides of pathogenic materials may be included. The total plan may not be (and rarely is) of interest on a particular day. A variety of other needs is met for stewardship plans, realtor work, court testimony, risk reduction, wildlife management, and estate planning. The material typically found in plans is available on a web site. The plan would has owner security. The landowner may call up his or her plan at any time, see color images, maps, and the latest information about the land and the plan for it. Models for components of everyone's plans are managed and improved from a central office but each person's plan remains directed to their personal objectives.

The stands (and other land units) and their area are based on likely species composition, density, size, condition, and age and likely dynamics. Superior site analyses of each stand and sub-unit of land are then delineated (mapped) and used to isolate stands of high quality vegetation, forest groves, and individual specimens to be considered for potential preservation in the development process. A variety of other needs is met for stewardship plans, realtor work, court testimony, risk reduction, wildlife management, and estate planning.

There are many premises and basic operating concepts of the The Trevey. The pattern of the general system and a systems approach are used.

A sketch of the general system.

Most premises are relatively simple and straight forward but their union and applications together produce a unique system with often amazing and far-reaching results. We have organized these premises largely within the categories of the general system, but some are inclusive and do not fit easily. They are labeled "Others" and may yield to further analysis and grouping.

Fundamental operating concepts that shape the work within The Trevey ... A systems approach Equifinality The n-dimensional hyperspace Land and the working platform Relations vs interactions Things (or energy) in time and space Alpha Units Non-linear predominates The rationally robust Sequence dominates factor effects Forest age dominates forest type Time-since...dominates factors Objectives of nature Objectives of publics Using a priori knowledge Cumulative knowledge Non-map land surface areas Action during the growing season The union of food and cover Transition tables Production functions Zones of influence Edge volumes The night world Lunar forces Minimum data; maximum information Heuristic optimization Alternative concepts of planning ... the system

• Context
  1. Forests are systems, large, very complex, and part of a larger system. No computer system can contain all aspects of a forest. Very large libraries exist describing human knowledge of forests, things in them and things affecting them. The system and its results have to be assumed to be important, minimal, essential, or, as some would say, reflect "the bottom line."The stands (and other land units) and their area are based on likely species composition, density, size, condition, and age and likely dynamics. Superior site analyses of each stand and sub-unit of land are then mapped and used to isolate stands of high quality vegetation, forest groves, and in a few cases, individual specimens to be considered for potential preservation in the development process. Unless the forest system, in total, is sustained and enhanced, then profits (even taxes) cannot be sustained indefinitely. This has been called "multi-product forestry" but staff believe that the enterprise concept is more broad and will serve well into the future.
  2. Landscape ecology concepts are included in the system in that adjacency, nearness, and juxtaposition concepts are included. There are analyses beyond those simply made within each forest stand.
  3. Developing with others a concept of a large regional rural and wildland use and management system called by some "enterpreneurial conservation." (An overview is available.)
• Objectives
• Inputs
  1. The Trevey simplifies the process of data collection and analysis, improves analyses, and reduces costs. The processes effected are the direct ones of field collection of data with GPS and using it in GIS, and analysis and the indirect ones of time, frustration, and discussions (even litigation) for everyone. It doesn't do research. Using research results as inputs, is a major premise, and use is partially to demonstrate the results of literally millions of dollars invested by others in yet-unused findings. (It is a knowledge mining operation.)
  2. Comprehensive description and diagnosis are made. This includes Components of a Forest Stand Delineation (Especially useful in Maryland), Components of a Forest Conservation and/or Stewardship Plan, and components for Certification (by SmartWood), all on an owner's Internet access for the Rural System
  3. Only "need-to-know" (vs. "nice-to-know") data are collected.
  4. Maximum information is processed from minimum data; usually each number collected is used several times in different ways.
  5. Often wildland profits, as in other business formats, cannot be maximum without financial investments. Typically results of a range of three investments are presented.(An Input as well as an Output premise.)
• Processes
  1. The Trevey engages in selecting and maintaining ecologically sound forested areas (e.g., designations needed in Maryland), but also provides a variety of net long-term benefits and services. This is a large order because "being sound" includes consideration of latitude, slope, the direction the slope faces, soil, elevation, weather and climate, and effects of seasonal differences on plants and animals. Solar radiation as well as air pollution and dozens of other present-day factors relate to historical phenomena and past land uses. Things far removed (for example, an area to which birds migrate or a volcanic eruption) can have a very local effect. Fire, wind (including hurricanes and tornadoes), snow and ice, floods, landslides, and earthquakes are also environmental factors that must be included in any complete understanding of a forest. These influences are factors even though they do not occur regularly. They have been active long before humans began colonizing North America when forests covered about half of the U.S. area. When forested areas of the region are formed or burned or there is a landslide, on these areas forests will re-grow unless only bare rock is left.
  2. It Provides a missing union among personnel during periods of rapid turnover and a stable resource in the face of changing personnel and often-lost knowledge about local ecosystems and management policies; especially valuable for increasing new managers' efficiencies; helps preserves group memory and area history. Knowledge is a resource; preservation and conservation of that resource is very important.
  3. When people attempt to select a forest or manage one along ecologically sound principles, it is essential to realize that a forest grows and typically will re-grow. There are trends, but no one can exactly predict what will occur if reforestation is left to chance or "to nature." To be "ecologically sound" is not a useful phrase since what is sound to one person is not to another. "Nature knows best", a useful general statement, is not precise enough about what will be the best forest. The "best" can only be analyzed based on human needs and wants, and both the forests and human needs change surprisingly rapidly. Additionally, future forests are very much the results of past human action such as fires, grazing, and lumbering.
  4. There is a direct connection between paper, lumber, and wood products needed and the forests. Trees must be cut to produce these products, but with wise forestry, both harvesting and reforestation, the forest can return, even better than before being logged. What may appear highly disruptive at first may be no different than a natural windfall, a fire, or a newly formed gap caused by wind in the forest canopy. The end result can be, with long-term management grounded in studies and research, the beautiful productive, profitable, forest. When well managed, the forest is a resource of wood and wood products, but one very diverse that includes wildlife, watershed protection, and many more resources, which will be described and displayed in The Trevey reports.
  5. Developing a fundamental array of generalized land uses and practices with costs
  6. Developing a system for estimating the physical consequences (expressed in major benefit categories) of engaging in any of the fundamental uses, practices, and changes in land use
  7. Developing an estimate of the optimum land use system and making comparisons of the existing or proposed systems to the optimum
  8. Producing decision guidance and planning "documents" showing the state of the community system, proposed (or needed) changes, effects of proposed changes on the state of the system relative to the optimum, and a limited set of suggested optional actions.
  9. The Trevey emphasizes the potentials for adding value to the land and to typical products. Logs, for example, may be the harvested item, but sawn lumber may be the unit for profit ... of sawn parts for furniture may produce higher returns from the same unit of output from the land.
  10. Many Memberships, for example in The Foresters, are all designed for profit, heightened experiences, safety, and links to other units of the ownership. Major membership is gained with others enjoying in a growing list of land units under superior management (with contacts and leads for efficient Certification under the SmartWood program if desired).
  11. Using the drainage basin or watershed as a unit of management, but not the only one, and grasps the new opportunities provided by Alpha units, the 10 x 10 meter pixel, each being unique in the world
  12. Providing unique algorithms for main topics of current interest such as biodiversity, sustainability, landscape ecology, ecosystem management, succession, indicator species, old growth or ancient forests, and minimum viable populations
  13. Helping citizens to make sense of the confusing array of facts, falsehoods, metaphors, unknowns, and value statements about the environment in general, and to understand the consequences of actions on a land unit
• Outputs (also see Objectives as Desired Outputs)
  1. Centers efforts on an approximate system performance measure(s)
  2. Comprehensive prescriptions (for 50 -year scheduling with a 150-year horizon) are made.
  3. Decisions are supported aided or assisted, not made by The Trevey. Only land owner or their managers "decide."
• Feedback
  1. The Trevey is dynamic, continually being edited, revised, improved, and its knowledge-base being expanded. Its presentation is being improved on the Web of the Internet.
  2. Avoiding the complaint of a plan being "that dusty-book-on-the-shelf" for it is in the computer (and parts, or all of it, can be printed on paper).
• Feedforward
  1. Providing an accessible lasting knowledge base for the concepts and principles of rural and wildland planning. Knowledge is lost; problems persist; mistakes are remade. The future can be improved.
• Others

  1. the 5 E's

     There are strong relations that exist in ecological, esthetic, environmental, economic and enforcement factors (the 5 E's) of the forest; many factors can be estimated based on other sets of factors.

  The Trevey is already in prototype form and delivered (paper copy) to the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indian Head, Maryland (1996) as its environmental plan. An advanced form was proposed to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for ranch and farm planning (1997), State and Private Forestry, and the US. Wildlife Refuge System but rejected. The latest concept is of the plan for a military base planning system or for a landowner in the form now being used.

  The material typically found in plans will be available on a web site. The plan would have security. The landowner would be able to call up his or her plan at any time, see color images, maps, and the latest information about the land and the plan for it. Models for components of everyone's plans are managed and improved from a central office but each person's plan remains directed to their personal objectives.

  Replacing confusing concepts of planning (there are some 40 definitions), The Trevey unifies geographic information systems work (GIS), simulation, optimization, ecological data bases, and general information (e.g, a 100-page glossary available in electronic form) to allow the landowner (as well as future staff) to learn about the land and to make decisions appropriate for the present and to account for the effects of decisions on the future system.

  The Trevey is large, complicated, and under continual development. It is a system that produces a plan for each of many areas such as a system of private lands, parks, forests, refuges, military areas, or wildlife management areas. Of course it can produce a plan for a single ownership. It has people, space, past research findings, computer software, databases, and hardware all working to produce, on demand, a "document" which was once called a "plan." Each document or product provides guidance to managers who have the knowledge of local situations, expertise, and responsibility for decision making. Such decision making is typical for complex natural resource systems. Such system invariably have conflicting objectives and require tradeoffs. Decision-making for them is believed to be among the most difficult, multi-faceted, high risk, and long-term in the world.

  A singular, generic system may produce a unique book (one rarely produced on paper because of its size and because it is readily seen at a web site in color) for each management area or unit. The electronic or internet book is like a good newspaper, out-of-date tomorrow. The Trevey shifts the emphasis from the plan to a planning system, a computer-based entity being continually updated, revised, edited, expanded, and made more interactive than the day before. An entire book may be obtained by the landowner, but chapters, tables, figures, and maps may also be retrieved from a computer screen or page printer. Ancillary products such as photographs of seeds or slides of pathogenic materials may be included. The total plan may not be (and rarely is) of interest on a particular day.

  The Trevey may help solve many major problems of land use management and provide site-specific answers in select areas of conflict. It will increase the efficiency and quality of decision making, thereby providing substantial cost and time savings to both managers and citizens throughout the regions of its use.

  The Structure: System Components

  The system is composed of

  1. a fundamental knowledge base;
  2. Trevey A input forms on computers for easy entry.
  3. unseen servers, software (e.g.,VisualBasic and ColdFusion), statistical and other analytical software, GIS data bases, basic text files
  4. tabular, statistical, and other data and analyses;
  5. legal, regulatory, and policy texts;
  6. summary information;
  7. impact analyses or consequence reports;
  8. optimum solutions to multiple-use problems; comprehensive description and diagnosis including Components of a Forest Stand Delineation (Especially useful in Maryland), Components of a Forest Conservation and/or Stewardship Plan, and components for Certification (by SmartWood), all on an owner's Web site (on the Internet) for the Lasting Forests. These are comprehensive prescriptions or guidance documents (for 50 year scheduling with a 150-year horizon sliding forward each year). These all include graphics, maps, and dynamic media.
  9. international dimensions related to education, transfer of technology, and cooperative management especially in animal-related, migration-related areas and ecotourism
  10. briefing and media aids (not only for landowners and boards of directors but also for the public) communicating the plan as only part of a planning process, with aids to help citizens integrate the technical aspects of management with political, social, economic and personal factors
  11. ancillary products such as user texts and computer programs that can be down-loaded for intensive study of problem areas; has a theoretical and conceptual support base in a series of electronic publications (e.g., e-books)
  12. computer-aided training modules (to improve use of the results).

  The Trevey is intended to integrate concepts of ecology, economics, esthetics, energetics, and enforcement in a multi-dimensional approach to major, complex land use problems through a centralized, comprehensive data base accessed directly by the system staff. The primary product of the system is a plan or plan part. Other outputs show in a variety of ways the consequences of any major land use act (for example, building a road extension). The consequences are shown in terms of the primary and secondary factors impinging on the action. The consequences of various types of approaches are traded off and combined in an R* index or resource-area system performance measure. One of several indices suggests a view of market-oriented production of a basket of commodities. The indices can be used to expand and enhance multiple-use and ecosystem management decision procedures

  Within the system, overall scores of the managed area are computed under varying conditions, thereby allowing comparisons to be made among the present conditions (described by a performance measure R) and the optimum (or desired condition, given the constraints) one with a score of R*. Expressions of maximum total benefits for people over the longrun that include reasosnable subsistence (but not necessarily blue-chip investment returns). In addition, there are procedures to gain wide citizen or key decision-maker inputs in a practical format. A modified benefit-to-cost algorithm is used, incorporating expert systems advances and artificial intelligence with non-linear optimization all placed on the land using the power of modern geographic information systems.

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