CROP is an acronym for Coordinated Resource Offering Protocol. This CROP interactive website, developed through a partnership established between the Utah Forestry, Fire and State lands, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and Oregon-based Mater Ltd., allows easy access to resource offering information within and between public agencies in a NW Oregon (Vernonia) landscape. It invites a protocol for levelizing supply by diameter, species, and volume between resource suppliers at that landscape scale. It changes the dynamics of resource offering within that landscape, while operating in a transparent process that encourages community collaboration, input, and support.

Why CROP? The CROP model's basic tenets are to:

• focus on the volume proposed to be offered from the forest floor within a target period (5 years out). This is unlike other forest biomass projects that focus on biomass inventory. The deliverable is biomass offering, not biomass inventory that may or may not lead to biomass offering and removal.
• facilitate the coordination of resource offering between public agencies within the CROP landscape.
• facilitate the use of long-term multi-agency stewardship contracts to achieve biomass removal performance within the CROP landscape.
• heighten public trust and support for biomass removal from public forest lands by focusing predominately on small diameter and biomass removal at landscape scale within a transparent process.
• increase the certainty of levelized offerings from public agencies focused on biomass removal within the CROP landscape; and
• invite investment back into the forest landscape to achieve fuel load reduction mandates and forest restoration goals.

Assessment: At landscape level - projected five-year resource offerings are obtained from public land resource providers. The annual resource offering data is for:

• Volume:  (in mmbf; green tons; ccf, etc.) with conversions
• Diameter sizes(dbh):         biomass                    small log                 large log
                                                 <4”, 4”- 7”              7”- 9”,  9”- 12”              >12”
• Species:  All species to be removed are counted in resource flow;
• Live or dead:  Identifies whether resource to be removed will come from live or dead material;
• Harvest type: Identifies how each species will be offered:  timber sale, stewardship contract, pre-commercial thin, fuelwood, post & pole, etc.;
• Location of resource offering;
• NEPA phase of resource offering from federal lands (approved, in-process, just started, and not started); and
• Road accessibility for each resource offering.

Mapping: Resource offering maps (ROMs) and charts are produced that allow website users the ability to quickly see projected resource flow within a defined investor landscape overtime. This interactive website functions quickly show who is going to be providing the resource and where it will come from. From there one can click on information that shows when the resource will be provided; how much will be provided; and in what diameter size. The volume-haul distance function of this website allows the user to easily and quickly search data results to match volume offered with actual road distance and haul time. Risk can be assigned by reviewing NEPA phase and road accessibility data matched to proposed offering. Aside from the user-friendly features of this website, the interactive format allows resource providers better opportunity to compare and coordinate their resource offerings with other resource providers in the same landscape. This ability to serve both website user and resource provider is a CROP hallmark feature.

Updating and Monitoring: The interactive CROP website is designed to be easily updated at any time by resource providers direct from the field with proper passcode. Users of the website will see the latest resource offerings while providing community-based organizations a logical collaborative structure and transparent format to effectively monitor the performance of the CROP model from year to year and over time.

If you are ready to begin, proceed to the "How to Use this Site" web page for a quick tutorial.

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