Neil Chapman
Northern Arizona Program Restoration Manager, The Nature Conservancy
Biography
Neil Chapman is The Nature Conservancy’s Northern Arizona Program Restoration Manager and lives in Flagstaff, Arizona with his wife Jennifer and son Joseph. Neil grew up in South Hadley, Massachusetts, a small western-Mass town along the Connecticut River established in 1775. Heading west for college, Neil received a B.S. from the Colorado State University School of Forestry in Fort Collins, Colorado in 2001. Shortly after college, Neil’s conservation career began with The Nature Conservancy at the Nachusa Grasslands in northern Illinois where he supported the stewardship of tall grass prairie and oak savannah restoration projects. In 2006, Neil returned to the west and began managing ecological restoration projects throughout northern Arizona based out of TNC’s Hart Prairie Preserve. Neil’s current role involves forestry and fire management programs throughout northern Arizona’s forests and grasslands. Recent projects include developing and field testing technologies that transform forest restoration project planning and mechanical timber harvesting operations. The technology streamlines project layout and provides an important source of data for adaptive management as operational information on prescription implementation is now readily available to sale administrators.
Presentation Topic
Accelerating Forest Restoration in Northern Arizona using the Digital Restoration Guide
Presentation Description
The Nature Conservancy is working to accelerate the pace and scale of forest restoration within the 2.4 million acre Four Forest Restoration Initiative. Implementation bottlenecks include the low value of small-diameter wood and associated biomass and the tentative social acceptance of large-scale treatments. The Digital Restoration Guide, an integration of existing and emerging technologies, addresses these bottlenecks by improving wood harvester efficiency, increasing the amount of acreage prepared for treatments, and obtaining new field operations data to better inform adaptive management. http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/arizona/restoring-arizonas-forests.xml
Workshop Schedule
Registration Opens
10:00 AMLight Lunch
11:00 AMKey Note Speaker
12:00 PMPanel: The Economics of Forest Restoration
Topics: Making Forest Restoration Economical, Contractor Logging Costs & Opportunities for Cost-savings, The Economics of Dry Forest Stewardship Projects, and Using the Land Fin Tool
Panel: From Inception to Implementation, Planning for Success
Topics: Planning at the Landscape Scale, Making Use of Good Neighbor Authority, Authorities to Maximize Restoration, and Packaging Federal Resources for All-lands Restoration
Panel: Cutting Edge Technologies for Sale Layout and Implementation (Part 1)
Topics: Virtual Boundaries and Discernable Boundaries, Integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in daily forest operations: from cruising to regeneration survey, Using Avenza PDF Maps in Concert with Cut-To-Length Harvesting Systems, and Planning Ground-based Harvest Operations to Limit Soil Impacts
Reception and Featured Speaker
5:30 PMBreakfast
7:00 AMFeatured Speaker
Panel: Forest Treatments for Riparian Health
Topics: Hydrology Concerns for Treatments in Riparian Areas, Riparian Thinning Using Cut-to-Length, and Riparian Thinning: An Example from the Deschutes National Forest
Panel: Managing Good Fire at the Right Place and Right Time (Part 1)
Topics: Managed Fire: A tool or a Hazard? An in-depth discussion with the Lakeview Forest Stewardship Group.
Panel: Managing Good Fire at the Right Place and Right Time (Part 2)
Topics: Prescribed Fire at Scale and Contracting Prescribed Fire
Panel: Bridges and Water Crossings: Challenges and Opportunities
Topics: Roads, Crossings and Culverts, Low-cost approaches to Low-Volume Roads and Water Crossings, Prioritizing Roads, Crossings & Culverts with NetMap.
Lunch: A View from All Sides: Perspectives on Implementation Efficiencies, Challenges, & Opportunities
Summary Statements from Forest Service Staff, Collaborative Member and Industry Representative discussed over Lunch
11:45 AMAdjourn
Have a safe trip home!
1:00 PMBreakfast
7:00 AMFeatured Speaker: Do Collaboratives Matter in Litigation?
with Susan Jane Brown
Panel: New Opportunities for Conventional Harvesting Systems and Biomass Utilization
Topics: Cut-to-Length vs Whole Tree Logging Systems, Biomass Utilization: Harvesting and Markets, and Managing Slash: Needs, Challenges, Opportunities
Panel: Steep Terrain Harvesting Systems
Topics: Skyline Logging: New Approaches to Traditional Systems, Steep Slope Logging, and Tethered Assist
Lunch
with optional practical application activity
12:30 PMFacilitated Conversations on the morning’s topics
Continue the discussion: The key elements of making forest restoration work economically viable
Panel: A Grounded Approach: Soil Considerations for Harvesting
Topics: Soil Matters: Improving Forest Landscape Planning and Management for Diverse Objectives with Soils Information and Expertise, Soil Resources Management for Logging in Steep Slopes, Interaction of Steep Slope Equipment with Soil Resources
Panel: Cutting Edge Technologies for Sale Layout and Implementation (Part 2)
Topics: Tablet applications for Implementing Silvicultural Prescriptions, Forest Restoration in the Tablet & Smart Phone era: Marking and Realtime Monitoring using the ICO APP, and Non-contact tree measurement for forest harvesting machines
Panel: Designation Methods: Lessons Learned
Topics: Alternative Contracting Methods and Implementation Strategies for Commercial Harvest, DxP and DxD
Facilitated Conversation on Afternoon Topics
or optional practical application activity
Dinner on your own
Enjoy one of the many area dining options at your leisure.
6:00 PM
