Summary

The Forest Service Activity Tracking System (FACTS) tracks forest activity. It is the official USFS record for many types of activities such as timber sales, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) decisions, trust fund plans, hazardous fuels reduction treatments, invasive species mitigation, and some range activities.

Problem and Solution

Region 6 identified missing and incomplete FACTS data across multiple forests. There are approximately 2,275 polygon errors for Project Area boundaries. Timber sales comprise 1,500 errors while NEPA polygons show 775 errors. These known FACTS errors needed to be addressed to ensure spatial records are complete, updated, linked, and pass qc checks. Xentity supported task initiation, execution of the task to address the polygon creation via digitization, attribution, document clarification, and additional polygons where new NEPA & Timber Sales show recent activity.

Specifically, Xentity provided a validated geodatabase of FACTS activities. Xentity populated a geodatabase with the missing NEPA & Timber Sale boundaries for the FACTS Project Area feature class. The attribute fields Name, ID, ProjectType, AdminORG, and CN were specifically populated from the master list of missing boundaries. In some cases, activities were associated with a project in error. So, Xentity documented those activity SUIDs for tabular corrections by forest staff. Finally, for recent and planned NEPA & Timber Sales, Xentity gathered official project area boundaries to add to the geodatabase.

Outcome and Benefit

The Forest Service received their validated geodatabase of FACTS activities, which of course included all aforementioned pieces of data and especially missing pieces of data. The aforementioned inaccuracies had been a glaring issue due to the simple fact that incomplete data provides incorrect information. As a company that focuses on the ‘information’ in IT, it was extremely important to us that the proverbial gaps were filled and the geodatabase could provide accurate and complete information.