Planning Tools: SUSTAIN

• SUSTAIN is a decision support software program developed by NRRI that can be used by land managers to assess the impact of different forest management scenarios in the context of sustainability.
• Indicators of bird biodiversity and forest ecosytem sustainability were incorporated into a decision support model that predicts forest ecosystem health and sustainability under a variety of management scenarios.
• Ecosystem health is quantified by an index and this index is compared to a range of indices calculated for the historical condition of the landscape undergoing a natural disturbance regime (range of natural variability).
• The software and information about how to use SUSTAIN can be obtained at www.nrri.umn.edu/sustain