User Guide

Learn how to use the Planscape Application

Overview

Planscape is a wildfire resilience planning support and collaboration tool to help you plan and prioritize landscape fire resilience treatments by leveraging the latest data and climate models.

Understanding the ecosystems of very large wilderness landscapes is challenging. Planning where to place treatments on those large landscapes takes a tremendous amount of time, staff and money. Even just finding accurate data to understand the state of the land – where have there been fires in the last 10 years, what’s the mean FRID, how many acres comprise endangered species territory – can be very complex. The goal of Planscape is to provide landscape-scale planners:

  • Access to the best available data
  • Ability to determine, based on the project goals, the best areas on the land to place treatments.

For landscape analysis backend, Planscape uses the ForSys planning tool, developed by the USDA Forest Service.

Using Planscape, a landscape planner can determine the most effective areas to plan treatments on a given landscape, based on their inputs and criteria. The tool makes it easy to run multiple scenarios with a variety of inputs to determine the most effective treatment areas.

Planscape Application

Planscape is a free, open source web based software application, built on tools and data provided by state and federal governments.

This version of Planscape gives you an opportunity to explore datasets on maps and  identify optimal treatment areas..

At a high level, you will use Planscape to perform the following tasks:

 

Planscape tasks
When you launch Planscape, you are considered as a Guest User. You can explore the maps as a guest user. When you want to create and save plans and scenarios, you will need to create a Planscape Account.

Map Viewer

The Map Viewer provides interactive visualization tools to explore datasets relevant to scenario planning. It features two primary tabs for data interaction: Data Layers and  Base Layers.

Data Layers are thematic datasets that vary in spatial extent. These layers represent dynamic data used in scenario planning workflows.

  • Use the search bar to filter datasets by keywords.
  • Only one Data Layer can be displayed at a time per map view.

Base Layers are vector datasets that provide context for planning decisions. These include:

  • Ownership boundaries
  • Disturbance history
  • Planning boundaries  

Map Controls

The control bar at the top of the map allows you to manage how maps are displayed:
 
  • Base Map Selectors: Toggle between different base maps (e.g., satellite, terrain).
  • View Layout Toggle: Choose between 1, 2, or 4 map views simultaneously.
  • Opacity Slider: Adjust the visibility of Data Layers across all map views.
  •  

Create a Planning Area

You can define your planning area using tools located on the far-right of the control bar:

1. Upload a shapefile of your planning area.

2. Draw directly on the map.

Account Management

When you launch Planscape for the first time using the web link app.planscape.com, Planscape considers you as a guest user.

 

As a guest user, you can:

  • Explore data from the Regional Resource Kits
  • View publicly available plans and scenarios*

 

*Accessible only via direct links.

When you create a Planscape account, you will have access to the complete capabilities of the application. 

As a logged in user with an user account, you can:

  • Create plans, scenarios and project areas
  • Test different land management options and view outcomes
  • Save planning areas
  • Download shapefiles and metadata from your plans

 

Creating a User Account

A Planscape user account is required for you to use the treatment area planning capabilities.

To create a user account:

1. You can use the Plus to zoom in or the minus sign to zoom out of a map.

create-account
Fig3: Link to create an account on Home page.

You can also click on Sign In on the menu bar.

2. In the Create your account page, enter your First name, Last name, a valid email address, enter a password, and repeat the same password in the Confirm password field.

 

Note: You must make sure the passwords in Create password and Confirm password fields match to see the blue Create Account button become visible.

3. Click Create Account. This action sends an email to the email ID you have added to the account. You will see the message below:

account confirmation
Fig4: Confirmation that the registration went successfully.

4. Check your email inbox. You should see an email similar to the one below:

account email
Fig5: Sample of validation email in your inbox.
5. Click the link to validate your email. This takes you to the Sign in to Planscape screen. Enter your email and password to log into Planscape.

Note: if you don’t receive a validation email, please check your spam folder.

After creating your user account, you can edit your information or deactivate your user account at any time.

Editing a User Account

After creating your user account, you can edit your information or deactivate your user account at any time.

To edit your user personal information:

  1. Click user user name on the top right corner of the screen to display the drop down options and click Account.
  2. In the Edit Personal Information page, edit the information you want to and click Save.

Deactivating a User Account

Planscape gives you an option to deactivate your account. Deactivating your account deactivates your plans from the application as well. Deactivation is not deleting the account. So if you ever want to reactivate your account, reach out to the Planscape team.

Planning Treatment Areas

Helping you determine the best locations for land treatment in your area of interest is the core capability of Planscape. This version of Planscape will help you to identify the best areas to treat depending on your requirements. At this time Planscape does not provide recommended treatment types. Recommended treatment type capability will be coming in future releases.

The planning capabilities of Planscape are built on top of ForSys, which is an open source tool developed by the USDA Forest Service. ForSys has been in use for years by the Forest Service to determine the most optimal treatment areas for any given project. Our goal with Planscape is to simplify the use of ForSys, and make it easier for people to get started with planning.

Creating a New Scenario

You can create multiple scenarios for each planning area. Each scenario can only have one treatment goal, and the variables per scenario are also very likely to change.

To create a new scenario:

1. On the Planning areas page, click one of your plans that you want to create a scenario for and click Scenarios from the lower right corner of the screen. You can also double-click on the planning area to get to the scenarios.

new scenario
Fig10: Your plans page.

2. Click New Scenario. The Planning Areas / <your plan name> / New Scenario page opens and shows the map view panel your planning area.

Create scenario
Fig11: Create scenario

In the left pane, enter a name for your scenario and select options for the following based on your treatment goals:

  • Name your Scenario –  When you name your scenario, it is recommended to include treatment type/acreage/stand size to make sure you can find specific information easily among multiple scenarios. For example: HiSev, 100k, Med to represent a scenario comprised of High Severity Fire Areas, 100K acres and Medium stand size.
  • Treatment Goals – You can select only one treatment goal per scenario. Select one treatment goal from the options. Note, the treatment goals are different for each region.
Treatment Goals
Fig12: Treatment Goals
  • Constraints –  You can choose either Max acres to be treated or Max budget as one of your constraints per scenario.

Note: The max areas to be treated must be between 20% and 80% of your total planning area acreage.

  • The default treatment cost is $2470/acre, derived from the RRKs. You can modify it. If you know your treatment type and cost, you can enter the cost directly.
  • You can enter your maximum slope and distance from roads. Note that the more constraints that you input, the fewer acres the tool can identify for treatment. For initial scenarios, you may want to input only one of these variables.
  • You can choose from small, medium or large stand sizes. Large stand size is the default, however small stand sizes are more accurate. However, if you have a very large planning area you may want to start with Large or Medium stands and scale down from there.

Note: The stand sizes represent the number of acres per stand. Small stand size equates to 10 acres/stand, Medium stand size is 100 acres/stand, and Large equates to 500 acres/stand.

Scenario Constraints
Fig13: Scenario Constraints
  • Exclude Areas – If you want to exclude any of the six listed areas from your scenario, select them. You can choose more than one exclusion, although the more you exclude, the less land that Planscape will be able to identify for treatment. Choosing too many exclusions will increase the likelihood that your scenario may fail due to a lack of available land to treat. 
Exclude Areas
Fig14: Exclude Areas

4. Click Generate. This will give you the results of your query on the Results page.

  • The map shows a maximum of 10 numbered areas. These numbers on the project area listing correspond to the numbers for each project area and are listed in priority from 1-10, based on effectiveness. You can see the information for each project area – acreage, cost and ranking in terms of how effective it will be in achieving the goal you chose on the configuration page. 
  • Below the Project area listing, you’ll see a number of graphs. These correspond to the metrics that are impacted by the scenario that is run. Note the numbers on the X axis correspond to the project areas.
  • If you click on the down arrow on the right, it will show you additional metrics that can be displayed.
  • If you click on the map icon on the left, it will bring up the map of that metric layer, from the regional resource kit, overlaid by the project areas. This is useful for additional data analysis.
Scenario with results
Fig15: Scenario with results

Note: if your scenario fails, it is likely because there are too many constraints applied. Constraints reduce the amount of available land on which the project areas can be identified. To reduce failure events, ensure that you set the maximum available acreage, limit constraints and exclusion areas. If your scenario continues to fail, eliminate all constraints and then add them back in iteratively. It can be challenging to identify which constraint is causing the failure. We recommend running all biodiversity questions, and the “Reduce Fire Risk to the WUI” question with ‘small’ stand size selected. 

You can save the metrics output as a .csv file for input into Excel or Google Sheets for further analysis. You can also print or save the map as a shape file.

You can create multiple scenarios for your plan

To create another scenario:

1. Click either on the back arrow button in the header, or the name of your plan. This will take you back to the New Scenario page. You can see the list of all the scenarios you have created on this page.

Options
Fig16: Options to back to create New Scenario

2. Similar to the Plan home page, you can either double click on a scenario or click the view button to bring that scenario back into view. If you have scenarios that have either failed or that you don’t need, you can also delete them from this page.

List of scenarios
Fig17: List of scenarios

Understanding Project Areas

Project areas are derived from the treatment goal and constraints such as budget, acreage, distance from roads, exclusion areas, and stand size you define for a scenario. The project areas are numbered sequentially, with #1 always being the highest ranked treatment area.
Project areas
Fig18: Project areas

In Figure 18 above, the project score is calculated for each specific treatment goal question . The score is the only Planscape results that determines the ranked order of project areas. If there are 10 project areas for one scenario, project area 1 will have the highest score and project area 10 will have the lowest score. The score reflects how well stands in a project area collectively meet the treatment goal criteria for the given configuration relative to other project areas for the same scenario.  

For example, if the treatment goal is “High Severity Fire Areas”, then the output of this treatment goal identifies areas that are currently at highest risk for high severity fire. Project Area 1 has the highest score and indicates that this is the area that is best for treating the places with high severity fire given constraints. However, the score does not directly tell the user anything about what those treatments will accomplish. It is not saying this is the project area where treatments will reduce the probability of high severity fire. 

The score calculation is based on the primary variables for each question, and how ForSys calculates the stand value for each of those variables by looking at the spatial data related to that stand. It’s important to understand what has gone into the formula to derive these outputs. For more information, see How ForSys Is Used to Determine Project Area Prioritization. For a single variable question, such as determining high severity fire areas, each treated stand in a project area is scored by ForSys on the probability of high severity fire, and the treated stands are summed to create a score for each project area. Then each project area is ranked by sum.

For queries with multiple variables, Planscape takes the output scale for each variable (that may be a combination of high severity fire and fuel load layers), normalizes those outputs, weights them equally, and then treats them as one value for that stand. For example, if variable A has values of 0.5 (numbers ranging from 0 to 1) and variable B has a value of 60 (numbers ranging from 0 to 100), Planscape normalizes them to be in the same range, so variable B now ranges from 0 to 1. The resulting value for A stays the same at .5 and variable B now has a value of .6, with a combined weighted value of 1.1 (the sum of 0.5 and 0.6). The combined input value of 1.1 is then used in ForSys for that stand, which is then summed with all stands for that project area. The project areas are then stack ranked, providing the score.

Different treatment goals will generate different project areas within a planning area. For example, determining where to best treat the land to prevent high severity fire may have very different results from determining where to best treat to protect spotted owl habitat. This is why it’s important to run multiple different scenarios per planning area to understand the optimal treatment areas for different needs. Also note that the treatment goal questions are different based on the region in which you are doing your planning, based on the ecology of regions. Some treatment goals may not be applicable to all regions.

Total available acreage is another important variable in determining project areas. If you run a budget constrained scenario, it’s likely that you will have fewer project areas. For larger available acreage, it’s likely that more project areas will be identified.

Stand size has a high impact on the project areas. Selecting a small stand size will provide the most granular and accurate output, however for large planning areas (>50K acres) this can take a long time to run. We recommend performing the initial scenario runs with medium or large stand sizes to test the outputs, and when the variables are set, then do the run selecting the small stand size. Small stand size runs of >100K acres can take 20-30 minutes. You will note that the project area priorities will be different at different stand sizes – this is as expected, as the tool is pulling much more granular information with smaller stand sizes, which changes the output.

The graphs on the Results page in Figure 17 provide information on the secondary metrics in the scenario. The default shows four charts, however by selecting the down-arrow on the top right of the chart, additional metrics can be selected. Each of these metrics comes from the Regional Resource Kit, and more information on those metrics can be found in the data dictionaries, described above. The X-axis shows the project area, while the Y-axis provides the measurement data related to the metric. These charts can be useful in reviewing a scenario, as it may show that a scenario run to identify optimal areas to prevent high severity fire may be contraindicated for spotted owls or other endangered species. 

All of the metrics output is available in a .csv file for import into other tools. A shapefile of the project areas can also be generated.

Collaboration

Planscape makes collaborating with other members of your planning team easier.

Sharing and Collaborating on Planning Areas

Collaboration is a key part of developing landscape treatment plans. Because you will want to both allow other people to look at your plans, and create their own scenarios based on their expertise, Planscape allows you to share your Planning Areas, and their associated Scenarios, with other users that you select. There are four access levels for Plans with different capabilities:

Creator

  • Creates the original planning area. Creator cannot be assigned to any other users. If a “Creator” leaves the project, the Owner can facilitate their tasks.
  • Can access planning area
  • Can delete planning areas
  • Can create scenarios
  • Can view all scenarios
  • Can invite others to planning areas

Owner

  • Can access planning area
  • Can view all scenarios
  • Create scenarios
  • Can invite others to planning areas
  • Can change Collaborator and Viewer access permissions

Collaborator

  • Can access planning area
  • Can view all scenarios
  • Create scenarios

Viewer

  • Can access planning area
  • Can view all scenarios

How to share a Planning Area

There are two ways to share a Planning area.

  1. Start from the Planning Area main page which lists all of your plans, select the plan you want to share, and then select the “Share” button at the bottom of the screen. A popup will then let you enter the email address of the person you want to share with, with options to let them be “Owner”, “Collaborator” or “Viewer”. Enter the email address and select the access level, then select “Done”. This will send an email to invite the shared user into the plan. This popup also lists the other collaborators in that Plan and their access levels
Collaboration Figure 1
Fig 21: Collaboration Figure 1
  1. Start from the Plan Scenario list page, and select “Share” from the menu bar. Note that you are not just sharing a scenario, you are sharing the entire Plan. The same popup will appear after you select “Share”, prompting you to add an email address and select the access level.
If a Creator or Owner wants to change access permissions, they will need to select the “Share” button, which lists the users and their access levels. They can then change permissions from that screen, including removing access.
Collaboration Figure 2
Fig 22: Collaboration Figure 2

Receiving Collaboration Invitations

After sending the invitation to join in the plan, the user(s) will receive email invitations. Those invitations will include a link to the planning area. Users need to be logged in to access a plan. If the invitee is not yet a user, then they will need to create an account by selecting “Create an Account” or “Sign In” on the Planscape home page. If the invitee was issued an invitation to collaborate, then the email will read “You have been invited to collaborate on Planning Area xyz.” If the invitee is a viewer, then the email will read “You have been invited to view “Planning Area xyz.” If your invitee does not receive an email, please have them check their spam folder.

Viewing Shared Plans and Scenarios

Once a plan has been shared, you will be able to see plans that you have been invited to on your Planning Areas page. When you go into that planning area, you will see any scenarios that have been created by your plan collaborators. Note in the image above that you will be able to use the toggle to show only your scenarios, or all scenarios.

Likewise on the Planning Areas page, if you click on the “Creator” title at the top of that column, it will toggle between showing most recent plans, or plans listed by the creator in alphabetical order.

Planning Area Notes

To facilitate collaboration, “Notes” can be added to planning areas by any plan collaborator. Notes are simple text comments that are made by users to add context or information about the plan.
To add a note, click on the “Notes” tab at the top left of the scenarios screen, and start to type your note into the “Add a Note” box at the bottom of the column. The user name and date the note was created will be added to the Notes list, in sequential order by time. Notes can be deleted by clicking on the ellipse next to the note.
Collaborations Notes
Fig 23: Collaboration Notes

Archiving Scenarios

Because plans may contain many scenarios, some of which may become outdated, scenarios may be archived. Scenarios have two states: Active and Archived. Any scenario can be archived, and archived scenarios can be restored. Planning area creators, owners, and scenario creators can archive and restore scenarios. Viewers cannot archive or restore scenarios. However, anyone who has access to a plan can view all scenarios, including archived scenarios.
Archiving Scenarios list
Fig 24: Archiving Scenarios List
Scenarios can be archived by selecting a scenario and clicking on the “Archive” button.
Archiving Scenarios list restore
Fig 25: Archiving Scenarios Restore
Archived scenarios can be restored to the active column by selecting the scenario and clicking on the “Restore” button.

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