Starting in 2000, the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program expanded the scope of field data collection activities by incorporating a suite of expanded forest ecosystem attributes on a subset of our sample locations. This subset, referred to as the Phase 3 sample, consists largely of the measurements and plots which formerly comprised the Detection Monitoring Plot Component of the Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) program. The expanded suite of measurements include data on tree damage, crown condition, presence of ozone damage, lichen species diversity, soils, and down woody material. A seventh set of measurements pertaining to total vegetative diversity is in development.

From 1990 to 1999, the FIA program collaborated with FHM to develop and implement the field measurements on a subset of FIA sample locations. Starting in 2000, FIA assumed lead responsibility for implementing and managing the data collection and analysis activities as part of our transition to an annual inventory program. We have continued to refine the sample design and measurement methods, and are moving towards incorporating the subsample seamlessly into the core FIA program. In the near future, our goal is to incorporate the Phase 3 data elements into all public FIA databases, enabling our clients to access all field collected FIA data.

Until we achieve that integration, the data processing for Phase 3 data elements occurs on a separate track from the rest of FIA field data. This page is intended to provide our users with access to the Phase 3 data collected under both the FHM program (1990 to 1999) as well as FIA (from 2000 onward).  In addition, access to the Presence of Ozone damage (1997-1999), Presence of Ozone damage (2000-2001), Lichen Species Diversity (1994-1999) and Lichen Species Diversity (2000-2001) is available through this site.

Alternately, users may prefer to download data on a more logical data level.  We have broken the data down into the following structure we refer to as View Like Units (VLUs).  A VLU is a standard data table, non-normalized, which includes many of the data elements that a typical user may want for analysis purposes.   There is a VLU for each year for each of the following:  PLOT, POINT, CONDITION CLASS, TREE, SEEDLING, BOUNDARY, SITE TREE, UNDERSTORY, AREA PERCENT, PLOT NOTES and LICHEN ABUNDANCE.  A VLU includes commonly used variables from different levels of the data base, for example plot number, subplot number, site quality, tree number, condition class number, DBH to name a few.  This page is intended to provide our users access to the VLU data through a pull-down menu format that allows the user to select a YEAR and VLU name.  A user can access the VLUs 1990-1999 and VLUSs 2000-onward data.

NOTE: All files are self-extracting archives and include documentation. There are two formats of data available: ASCII comma delimited data (.DAT) and SAS 6.12 datasets (.SD2). The ASCII data includes an Oracle description of the data (.CMT). The SAS data includes a SAS contents description of the data (.DOC).