A CASE STUDY ON FOREST RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT WITH GIS

Contents:
1. Introduction
2. GIS
3. Role of GIS for FRM in Eth.
4. Current GIS based Research Projects
5. Conclusion
Introduction
Forest Resource in Ethiopia has a role:
Food, animal feed, & wood, environmental protection, regulation of local and regional climates,
and preventing desertification. Conservation, utilization and development of these resources
require proper forest management (FM).

Forest Management
It is a collection of data, and the formulation of plans for the manipulation of the forest resources
to preserve or supply products on a sustainable base.
It requires timely available forest information

Geographical Information Systems (GIS):

Concept and Definition
GIS is a computer system: function used for collecting, compiling, storing, retrieving,
transforming and
displaying, updating. Manipulating and analyzing all forms of geographically referenced data
from the real world for particular set of purposes.
Allows the user to collect and analyze data and view it in map or image.
Components:
Computer hardware: Computer or central processing unit: provides space for storing data and
programs
Digitizer: is used to convert data from maps and documents in to digital form
Plotter: Plotter is used to present/print the results of the data processing
Software component: there are many different types of GIS software
MapInfo, ArcView, Arcinfo, ArcGIS
Organizational Context: The acquired data has to be processed for a specific purpose. This needs
a proper organization of the data. All the data has to be organized according to their nature and
the type of activities to be used.

Data sources
Global Positioning System (GPS)
Used to collect ground data, is also a powerful navigation tool that can guide us anywhere in the
world.

Role of GIS for Sustainable Forest Resource Management in

Ethiopia:
Forest Resource Assessment: Information on forest extent, and distribution of the forest is a
necessary first step for effective FMP, GIS is applied to know how much of what type is found
where.
Forest cover change analysis: For ensuring FRM, it is necessary to monitor the ongoing
changes in forest land use/ land cover pattern over a period of time.
Forest monitoring: Deigning effective FMP requires timely available information for checking
the situation of the forest resources. GIS support monitoring processes of forest resources by
capturing the data needed to: identify the species and habitats at greatest risk (weed), to estimate
level of pest infestation/infection to determine the spatial distribution and rate of fire occurrence
to identify and follow the hotspot areas for disease occurrence.

Suitability analysis for plantation / agro-forestry development:

provision of scarce raw materials plantation, increase productivity through the provision of
shade and shelter, the production of alternative sources of livestock fodder agro-forestry.
Regeneration study: FMP requires dynamics of regeneration after exploitation GIS help to
identify the location of regenerated species.
Forest yield modeling: Forests have a long gestation period for the yield, one of the
mechanisms to check this is the use of models to predict the yield based on the existing
situations. The forest yield could be inferred from the presence of certain parameters of forest
resources using GIS modeling.

Current GIS based research projects:

Study site and Methodology: Study site-national scale.
Methods: Spatial analyses of each target species within GIS environment.
Expected out- put: Map of suitable areas for each economically tree/shrub.

Conclusion:
The Ethiopian forest resource can be conserved and wisely utilized though effective forest
management plan.GIS clearly can contribute to the designing of sustainable Ethiopian forest
management plan by providing the required information.

Reference:
Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research.