Tongass National Forest

Recreation and tourism continue to grow at a significant rate on the Tongass. The 2003 SEIS stated that these industries presently represent 39% of the jobs in Southeast Alaska. Such increases in use are resulting in higher uses in localized areas. Such use may not be compatible with the ROS guidelines associated with the LUDs in which the localized areas occur.

ROS has been used as a guideline in the Forest Plan and provides a framework of settings and experience opportunities to define capabilities of NFS lands to meet identified recreation needs and services. This reflects that ROS is more of an inventory tool. Mapping of ROS in the Plan has primarily been accomplished by corresponding a ROS objective with each LUD in the Plan. Forest Plan implementation projects and increases in use of localized areas have created the need to change the inventory since 1997. Project planning often has updated the ROS inventory for a given area, but this updated information has not consistently been updated into the corporate GIS library. (See also concern that new or updated information from projects are not being incorporated into the corporate GIS library [04-2].) A project was authorized as part of the SEIS closeout to transition from the 1997 ROS layer that was used in that effort to an updated useful corporate library version.

Incorporate the SEIS closeout efforts into the corporate library as applicable. Participate in the GIS corporate library policy review and policy development strategy to promote ongoing ROS updating as conditions change. Complete an evaluation of changes in ROS since 1997 using the updated ROS coverages.

• Forest Recreation Planner
• GIS Group Leader
• Forest Planner

• Updated GIS corporate ROS layer with policy for keeping updates current with activities that influence the ROS inventory.
• Evaluation of changes in inventoried ROS since 1997 and as discussed in Chapter 6 of the Forest Plan.