RPA tree-level database users guide

The Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act (RPA) of 1974 calls for a periodic assessment of the Nation's renewable resources. The Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the U.S. Forest Service supports the RPA effort by providing information on the forest resources of the United States. The RPA tree-level database (RPAtreeDB) was generated from the FIA database to facilitate the reporting of forest estimates and their associated sampling errors for the most recent RPA forest resource report (Oswalt et al. 2014). The RPAtreeDB contains plot- and tree-level data, collected by FIA, for the 48 coterminous States, southeast Alaska, and portions of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. This database is available to the public as a Microsoft Access™ 2010 database. The RPA2012_EVALIDator reporting tool can generate custom reports for a variety of forest statistics based on the inventories used in compiling the 2012 RPA forest resource report (Oswalt et al 2014). The reporting tool can be used to generate tabular reports based on stand-level variables such as forest type and stand-size and tree-level variables such as species and diameter class.