Inside certain basins, the planning of forestry operations must be made as to not increase the water flood peak. On those territories, the equivalent cut area (ECA) must be equal or inferior to 50%.

GSF A.E.C. automatically calculates, on a polygon (watershed area), the equivalent cut area, meaning the area on which over the years, there have been disturbances of both human and natural origins. This index value is expressed in terms of area cut for the year of reference.

The application is presented as an easily accessible toolbar in ArcView project views. This tool consists of functions for management and configuration in addition to the main function for the calculation process.

At version 3.3.4, a new functionnality give access to an automatic watershed merge process with thoses at the top.

Thanks to a user-friendly interface, the user can calculate on one or multiple basins (serial processes) by simply specifying the layers for the watersheds, the forest tree populations and updated forestry interventions.

The results of the calculations can be presented in a Crystal Report text file or simply saved in the basin layer itself. The result data include the ECA area, the ECA index and the year of reference.

The “TREC Manager” interface allows the user to modify the regressive cutting effects rates which are the weighting factors that the application will consider while processing the data.

The default values entered into the database are those provided by the ECA calculations method produced by the Quebec Minister of Natural Resources and Wildlife in September of 2004. The user can add or change de codes and factors of extension to fit his or her needs.

Since the version 3.3.4, each code has the specification for the intervention type to know if it's permanent or partial. This way, it will be possible to update the forest stands with an intervention theme with 1 field.

This extension allows dynamic configuration of field names used to facilitate its processing and usage.

This configuration may be different for each of the separate layers of basins, tree populations and forestry interventions.

The function "Structuration des bassins" create an automatic merge process of the current watershed and thoses who deverses in it.

The function result is a new theme to be use in the EAC calcul.

This new tool at 3.3.4 can now help the users do a large number of analysis in a few seconds.