What is it?

You can impose a green-up delay in Woodstock around pre-scheduled harvest units using the proximal analysis utility.  Using this utility, the system applies harvest delays to forest types that are proximate to (physically touching or nearby) pre-scheduled harvest units (i.e., preblocks).  The length of the delay is calculated based on the time required for harvested tracts to ‘green-up’—the green-up interval—and the period in which units or blocks are scheduled for harvest. 

How do you use it?

You access the proximal analysis utility anytime that you build the Areas section.  At the bottom of the Build Woodstock Areas section dialog, there is a checkbox for including a proximal analysis, and whether or not to apply locks to all or only some actions (you may only wish to apply delays to final harvesting and not to planting or thinning). 

When you activate this utility, the system adds a Proximal tab to the Build Areas section dialog in which you specify the proximal distance and the green-up delay.  For detailed instructions how to configure a proximal analysis see article 572, Building the Areas section file using Woodstock in the Remsoft Documentation System.  It is important to note that the proximal analysis only applies to preblocks.

When the system builds the Areas section, it will scan the shapefile for preblocks and add access locks to the Areas section for development type classes that are (1) within the proximal distance of a pre-scheduled harvest unit and (2) that are operable to an action within the greenup interval.

What is the benefit?

The benefits of a proximal analysis are two-fold.  First, you align the forest model with ongoing operations and impose a greenup delay in an otherwise non-spatially-explicit model.  Second, when you allocate activities to forest polygons, the near-term of the source schedule contains zero or minimal green-up/adjacency conflicts.   This in turn improves allocation success.