New approaches to forest planning

This report chronicles a large-scale effort to map place values across the Pacific Northwest Region (Washington and Oregon) of the U.S. Forest Service. Through workshops held with Forest Service staff, 485 socioculturally meaningful places were identified. Staff also generated corresponding descriptions of the places' unique social and biophysical elements--in other words, "niche" qualities and "niche" statements that reflected people's values. These places and their niches were then mapped using geographic information systems technology. Niche information was supplemented with additional existing data such as National Visitor Use Monitoring, National Survey of Recreation and the Environment, U.S. and Canadian census data, and other relevant social and economic information. Current and potential applications of this information-gathering technique are discussed, including its uses in forest planning at regional and niche-based levels.