Forest working plan

Forests are one of the major sources of livelihood that need to be conserved. In India, there have been continuous efforts to evolve a scientific basis for sustainable management of forests. In recent century, this has primarily been addressed through "forest management plans," also known as "working plans." To make the plans uniform for each of the forest management units, guidelines have been issued by Government of India in the name of "working plan code,"which are revised periodically to match present days' requirement. A working plan largely deals with the present state of the forest, outcomes of past management, and proposal of future management on a scientific basis. With a significant lapse of time, the role of forests has been recognized beyond mere supply of timber (a major resource) to fulfilling the demands of minor resources and ecological services. This has transformed the basis of forest management and the working plans. With reference to India, we discuss the relevance of working plan for sustainable management of forests; highlights of the most recent working plan code (2014); relevance of the code with reference to climate change and biodiversity, future perspectives, and recommendations for better management of the forests.

The multiplicity of forest products and their uses, and the conflicts it may cause among the stakeholders and its long gestation period makes forestry planning to be considerably complex. Information need in forestry basically involve characterizing the location, area, and status of the forest resources / wildlife and the change in spatial and time domain. These information needs are not met entirely by traditional techniques because those were not practical or economically sound to devote more effort to human intensive menstruation activities. Indian forests are managed through the working / management plans, which are revised once in 10 years. Working plans are mainly oriented towards the production forestry and implemented in forest divisions, whereas management plans are focused on protection forestry and applicable to protected areas like National Parks, Tiger Reserves and wildlife sanctuaries.
The forest management / working plans require timely and accurate geospatial information about forest condition, wildlife status and management practices at site specific and regional scales. Geospatial technologies, such as remote sensing, Geographical Information System (GIS), Global Positioning System (GPS) provides vital support to collect, analyze and store all sort of geospatial information ((Rao et al., 2006). Though commercial packages facilities to customize the above modules in their own environment, exorbitant cost of such an approach becomes a limiting factor for providing the utilities to a large number of users.
To tackle this problem two-standalone packages, Forest Management Information System (FMIS) and Protected Area Management Information System (PAMIS), have been developed by customizing the packages on low cost third party libraries, which can cover all the functionality envisaged in the system. FMIS is information and decision support system for working plan department and PAMIS is for protected areas like National parks, wildlife sanctuaries and tiger reserves. These information systems incorporate the functionality to view, query and analyse the data as per the requirements of users. Further, report generation utilities for providing inputs to management plan as per the need and convenience of the user department is developed and integrated into the system. This will enable any time anywhere availability of data, analysis and visualization system at the different hierarchy of the forest department.

Working Plans are  the  instruments for  scientific forest  management. They are  useful in  evaluating the  present status of  natural  resources, assessing the  impact of  past  management practices and  deciding management interventions  to  achieve the  objectives of  the  Working Plan.  Generally it  takes 3-4 years  to prepare the  draft plan  and  management  maps. The  conventional  method of  making inputs for  Working Plan  using ground survey is a  tedious process and    time  consuming. The  deforested areas and  Renotified forest  areas  are  shown survey number wise  in  the  cadastral  maps.  Hence,  there is a  need  to  integrate  both topo  sheets and  village maps  to  have  a  single  ownership map  for  the  administrative  purposes and  it  can  be
accomplished through  GIS  only  because they  are in  different scales.

The  present study analyzed the  feasibility of  using  Remote  Sensing and  GIS  in  the generation of  inputs for  forest Working Plan  preparation.  The  area statistics of  the  spatial data such  as  slope, drainage, and density, which  have  been  calculated  using  the  GIS  helped  the  manager to  allocate compartments to  various Working Circles. The  Coupe treatment  map  which  is  prepared  based on  ocular  estimation  results  in rather inaccurate and  inconsistent  treatment  maps.  Spatial  depiction of  various treatment  types Coupe treatment Map  as  prescribed  in  the  plan  and  calculation of  their areas, both  management  unit  wise  and administrative  unit wise  has  become possible.  Identification  of  suitable  patches for  plantations, check dams, percolation  tanks and  compartment wise  calculation of  these  areas has  become  possible. Preparation of  Grazing Closure and  Class I  Fire Control area  maps  which change every year  has  become possible which  will  be  helpful for  better  monitoring •  enforcement  of  Grazing Closure and  Fire  Control.

It  has  been  demonstrated that preparation of  Working Plan  can  be  achieved quickly with  much  more accuracy, consistency  and  cost-effectiveness by  using  remotely sensed data  in  GIS  environment. Due  to  its capability to  provide timely, synoptic and  repetitive coverage over  large  areas across various spatial scales, frequent and  periodical  monitoring and  evaluation of  the  forest  resources  would be  possible for  proper maintenance and  management. Utilization of  RS  and  GIS  inputs for  Working Plan preparation  can  be further  enhanced by  measurement of  tree  height  and stand  volume, which  could not  be estimated directly from  optical  Remote Sensing data  owing to  poor  correlation  between tree  height and  reflectance values