Overview

SIMFOR evaluates the response of forest vegetation to harvesting treatments or natural disturbance events, and calculates potential landscape and wildlife habitat conditions. A harvest scheduler, such as ATLAS, produces a list of stand units treated according to a specific harvesting scenario. SIMFOR combines this list of treatments with an aging routine to determine the future ages of stands (seral stages) and their expected structural values. SIMFOR can also incorporate natural disturbance events generated by a scheduler. Stand structure is represented by the abundance of selected habitat attributes or variables. By matching wildlife species requirements with these habitat attributes, SIMFOR estimates species-specific habitat suitability. In addition, the software uses spatial relationships to project simple landscape metrics: seral stage, patch size and edge characteristics. SIMFOR also allows projection of stand succession resulting from stand aging or harvest treatment.

New Features in Version 3.0

• full featured expression builder
• habitat attribute input maps (static and dynamic)
• allows stand succession
• direct link to ArcView 3.x with Spatial Analyst
• stratified reporting on output maps
• many refinements