Third party certification
Conformance Innovations
Landscape Management Plans
A Landscape Management Plan (LMP) is a forest management plan covering all properties within a specified region. Rather than describe forest characteristics at the individual parcel level, LMPs use large-scale, publicly available geodata sets to generalize probable biophysical attributes across a landscape, develop recommendations consistent with landowners' goals and objectives based on common characteristics of current and desired future conditions where specific attributes exist, and identify and mitigate risk to common values of concern.
LMPs are the preferred instrument for validation under sustainability schemes that require current, adaptive forest management plans, because they can be updated in a single process. Landowners still develop customized goals and objectives for their forests, while the elements of the LMP are used to demonstrate conformance with sustainability frameworks' performance measures and indicators. This model has been third-party tested and validated in multiple ATFS audit cycles.
ATFS-compliant LMPs are currently available for the following states:
Small Lands Module
The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and the American Forest Foundation (AFF) work in partnership to offer the Small Lands Module. Under this Small Lands Module, companies certified to the SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard can form a group to certify small lands in their supply basin to ATFS in the U.S and to SFI in Canada.
Risk Based Approach for SDE+ Compliance
A risk-based approach is a strategic framework that identifies, assesses, and prioritizes threats to important values, enabling targeted risk mitigation to ensure long-term system resilience and compliance.
In 2020, the American Forest Foundation was engaged to develop a risk-based approach (RBA) for energy producers wishing to achieve conformance with the Netherlands Subsidy Scheme for Renewable Energy (SDE+). Although subsequent updates resulting in SDE++ no longer risk-based approaches as a pathway to compliance, this collaboration remains as a powerful proof of concept for RBAs.
