D | O | G PPGIS

In 2015, the US Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland State University, Deschutes National Forest (DNF), Ochoco National Forest (ONF), US Forest Service Region 6, and Discover Your Forest embarked on a collaborative project to understand spatial patterns of public use on the national forests and grassland of Central Oregon and the ecosystem benefits attached to those places.  We developed an interactive web mapping survey application for collecting data from the public, including both local and nonlocal visitors, regarding the places they value in Central Oregon’s national forests and grassland. The project, which aimed to facilitate data collection on human connections to the DNF, ONF, and Crooked River National Grassland (CRNG, managed by the ONF), became known as the Human Ecology Mapping (HEM) project. At the time the project began, the DNF and ONF anticipated that they would be revising their forest/grassland plans in the near future. The HEM project aimed to generate socio-spatial data layers describing the myriad connections people have with these public lands, which would inform future planning efforts.