Forest Stewardship Program

The Forest Stewardship Program is a cooperative effort between the Kansas Forest Service and the USDA Forest Service encouraging  private landowners to actively manage their forests and related resources, and to keep these lands in productive, healthy condition for current and future generations. It aims to increase the economic, environmental and social benefits of private forestland by enhancing and protecting timber, wildlife, soil, water, recreation, and aesthetics.

Program direction is provided by the State Forest Stewardship Coordinating Committee (PDF), whose 17 members represent a broad spectrum of both government agencies and private organizations who share responsibility for the state’s forest resources. The Coordinating Committee has developed a five-year State Forest Stewardship Plan (PDF) that provides the frame work for the implementation of the Forest Stewardship Program in Kansas.

"Helping private landowners develop plans for the
sustainable management of their forests"

To accomplish program goals professional forestry expertise is offered to landowners to help them develop Forest Stewardship Plans (PDF) for their property free of charge. Landowners may request assistance through their District Forester.

Forest Stewardship Awards Program:
Each year the Kansas Forest Service has the opportunity to recognize landowners who are actively implementing their Forest Stewardship plans through the Forest Stewardship Awards Program. This program recognizes landowners on a district level and selects one district award winner to be the State Forest Stewardship Landowner of the Year. Nominations must be received by the Rural Forestry Coordinator by January 31st each year.  Award winners receive a sign, certificate or walnut plaque.

If you know of a landowner deserving to be nominated for the Forest Stewardship Awards Program, or you yourself would like to be nominated, please contact your District Forester and let them know.

Educating forest landowners is an important part of the Forest Stewardship Program. Each year a Fall Forestry Field Day provides a variety of forestry educational opportunities to help landowners manage their woodlands and tree plantings. Often the Field Day is hosted on the property of the State Forest Stewardship Landowner of the Year.

Additional information about the Forest Stewardship Program may be found at the USDA Forest Service National Forest Stewardship Program website.

Spatial Analysis Program (SAP):

The Forest Stewardship Program (FSP) Spatial Analysis Project (SAP) evaluates the impact made on the landscape over the last decade by the FSP and identifies the areas with the most stewardship suitability to allow for strategic delivery of the FSP.

The Kansas SAP consists of two main parts: (1) An historical spatial database of stewardship plan tracts and (2) a fifteen layer suitability analysis performed using geographic information systems (GIS). The GIS portion includes twelve layers mandated by the USDA Forest Service and three additional data layers deemed important by the Kansas Forest Service (KFS).

The KFS began the SAP process in September 2005 and finished the project in February 2008.GIS services were performed by the Geographic Information Systems Spatial Analysis Laboratory (GISSAL) in the Department of Geography at Kansas State University under contract with the KFS. Historical stewardship plans (1992-2007) were provided to GISSAL by KFS as paper documents. Most of these documents included maps, which served as the basis for digitizing parcel and plan boundaries in a GIS and then stored in an ArcGIS personal geodatabase. A total of 1,313 stewardship plans containing 2,796 parcels from across the State of Kansas were added to the geodatabase. These plans represented 41,855 acres of land for which stewardship plans had been developed.

Concurrently with the digitizing of stewardship plans, KFS and GISSAL worked together to identify key data to be used in the multilayer suitability analysis. In addition to the twelve basic layers required of all states, the Kansas SAP also incorporated information related to soils (i.e., tree and shrub suitability, agroforestry suitability) and forest productivity (based upon topographic aspect and annual precipitation criteria). A weighted forest stewardship suitability analysis was computed in a GIS using the twelve required and three ‘state optional’ data layers. The weighting scheme applied was developed based on input from KFS field foresters, program leaders, and the Kansas Forest Stewardship Coordinating Committee.

Analysis Results:

Stewardship Capable Lands in Kansas:

• There are approximately 50.6 million acres of land in Kansas capable of being included in the Forest Stewardship Program.
• Of those 50.6 million acres, approximately 3.9 million are forested (Source of forest landcover information: Kansas GAP Landcover Database).
• There are a total of 41,855 stewardship plan acres in the state, representing less than 0.1% of the total stewardship capable lands in Kansas.

Stewardship Potential in Kansas:

• Nearly 21 million acres (42%) of the total acres capable of stewardship in the state was evaluated as having ‘high’ stewardship potential.
• 22.6 million acres (45%) of the total acres capable of stewardship was evaluated as having ‘medium’ stewardship potential.
• 6.9 million acres (14%) of the total acres was evaluated as having ‘low’ stewardship potential.  

For additional information:

Forest Stewardship Spatial Analysis Project,
Summary Report for Kansas Forest Service

SAP Composite Maps
[PDF] [MXD]

Maps for Individual Data Layers
[MXD]

Kansas SAP Website