Forest Futures

A clear and concise guide for volunteer scanners is essential for creating a rigorous, consistent, and sustainable horizon scanning system. The scanner guide written for the Forest Futures Horizon Scanning system is presented in its entirety. The guide includes an overview of the USDA Forest Service; an explanation of horizon scanning and its goals, uses, and stakeholders; a "how to" guide for installing and using the Web-based system for collecting scanning hits; a description of the domain map used in tagging scanning hits; and a quick guide to getting started in scanning.

The USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station's Strategic Foresight Group partnered with the University of Houston Foresight program to design and implement a horizon scanning system for the agency. The guiding question for the project was: What emerging issues might impact forests, forestry, and the Forest Service in the future? The University of Houston's "Framework Foresight" approach provided the conceptual foundation for this horizon scanning system. Framing of the topic is described, including creation of a domain map, and identifying the geographic focus, timeframe, and stakeholders for scanning. Three principal steps in the scanning process are then defined: finding signals of change, collecting the signals in an online database, and analyzing the database in order to shed light on possible implications for the future of forestry. Lessons learned in the implementation of the horizon scanning system are discussed.

The Forest Futures Horizon Scanning Project

A key purpose of the Forest Futures Horizon Scanning system is to identify weak signals of potential future change and emerging issues for the USDA Forest Service and its stakeholders. An understanding of current issues facing the agency is a prerequisite for identifying weak signals and emerging issues. Scanners who work for the Forest Service generally have this understanding, but scanners from outside typically have little or no familiarity with current agency issues. This paper briefly describes an effort to develop a list of current issues for the Forest Service to be used by scanners in the Forest Futures Horizon Scanning project. Twelve broad current issues are identified and summarized.

The Forest Futures Horizon Scanning Project

Natural resource management organizations carry out a range of activities to examine possible future conditions and trends as part of their planning process, but the distinct approach of formal horizon scanning is often a missing component of strategic thinking and strategy development in these organizations. Horizon scanning is a process for finding and interpreting early indications of change in the external environment of an organization or field. Effective horizon scanning serves as an early warning system to identify potential opportunities and threats, enable decisionmakers to plan accordingly and take timely action, and foster a culture of foresight throughout an organization. This paper reviews and discusses the key items needed to create an effective horizon scanning system: conceptual frameworks, organizational approaches, design principles, techniques to improve effectiveness, and techniques for analyzing and interpreting scanning results.

World Futures Review

Managers and policy makers are continually working toward a desired future within a context of rapid and turbulent change. To be effective in this context, they must look ahead to anticipate emerging trends, issues, opportunities, and threats. Horizon scanning is a foresight method that can help managers and policy makers develop and maintain a broad and externally focused forward view to anticipate and align decisions with both emerging (near-term) and long-term futures. This article reports on the design and early stage development and implementation of a horizon scanning system established for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), Strategic Foresight Group, and developed cooperatively with the University of Houston Foresight Program. The goal of the project is to develop an ongoing horizon scanning system as an input to developing environmental foresight: insight into future environmental challenges and opportunities, and the ability to apply that insight to prepare for a sustainable future. In addition, the horizon scanning system is supported by volunteers from within the Forest Service. By including participants from throughout the Forest Service, the project seeks to foster a culture of foresight within the organization, and eventually to develop a more forward looking organizational structure for the USFS and other natural resource management agencies. Lessons learned from the experience to date are shared as well as future challenges for keeping the horizon scanning system in good working order-current, relevant, and consistent.

The Forest Futures Horizon Scanning Project

Horizon scanning produces a significant amount of information about potential change that may be on the horizon. To be useful for the intended audiences, this large volume of information must be sorted, condensed, analyzed, interpreted, and presented in formats that fit the needs of diverse users. This paper describes the various current and planned communication outputs of the Forest Futures Horizon Scanning project, including the scanning library, blog posts about significant scanning hits or emerging themes, a periodic digest summarizing interesting scanning hits, detailed articles and technical reports, presentations to a wide range of audiences, and input to other strategic foresight projects. A possible additional output would be to offer focused scanning services on priority issues to groups within the USDA Forest Service.

The Forest Futures Horizon Scanning Project

The Forest Futures Horizon Scanning Project

Growing indigenous empowerment and recognition of rights with respect to natural resources was identified as an emerging trend in the USDA Forest Service-University of Houston Forest Futures Horizon Scanning system. An exploratory Implications Wheel ® exercise was conducted to uncover possible future implications of this trend. The exercise was carried out with a group of University of Houston Foresight graduate students, faculty, and alumni. The exercise did not include American Indian or Alaska Native participants, and due to this limitation it should be viewed as an illustration of the usefulness of the method for exploring the implications of horizon scanning hits. A total of 175 first-, second-, and third-order implications were generated. Analysis of the implications found nine emerging themes and four scenarios. The findings reveal the wide range of significant possibilities that could result from growing indigenous empowerment and suggest the importance of monitoring this trend as it unfolds.