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FORM-TRACE: A formula-based method for tracking forest-management transitions at Harvard Forest from 1908 to 2026
Nophea Sasaki1, Eain Dray Aung1
1Sasin School of Management, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand.
Methodsx
|July 24, 2026
Summary
Tracking forest management changes over time is challenging due to varied documentation. FORM-TRACE (Forest Record Analysis for Tracking Change) provides a reproducible workflow for analyzing historical forest documents, ensuring transparent and verifiable results.
Area of Science:
- Forestry and Environmental Science
- Digital Humanities
- Information Science
Background:
- Documenting long-term forest management changes is hindered by diverse report types, evolving terminology, and varied purposes.
- Converting historical documentary records into reliable temporal claims about management practices is methodologically complex.
- Existing approaches lack transparency in corpus selection, data extraction, and quantitative analysis.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce FORM-TRACE, a formula-based workflow for systematically analyzing historical forest management documents.
- To demonstrate the application of FORM-TRACE using documents from Harvard Forest and New England (1908-2026).
- To establish a transparent and reproducible method for measuring documented attention to forest management over time.
Main Methods:
- Developed a formula-based workflow (FORM-TRACE) that records corpus decisions, extraction quality, domain terms, and calculations.
- Applied FORM-TRACE to 215 selected PDF documents from a pool of 257, extracting and scoring 201 documents.
- Generated a corpus manifest, extraction log, keyword-domain matrix, and five equations for document- and period-level indicators.
Main Results:
- The FORM-TRACE workflow produced a detailed corpus manifest and extraction log, highlighting inclusion/exclusion criteria and coverage gaps.
- A keyword-domain matrix and five quantitative equations yielded document- and period-level indicators of forest management attention.
- Saved score tables, plot data, and validation records enable independent verification without redistributing copyrighted materials.
Conclusions:
- FORM-TRACE offers a robust and transparent method for analyzing historical forest management documentation.
- The workflow quantifies documented attention, distinguishing it from direct measures of management performance.
- Separating scoring from interpretation enhances the reliability and reproducibility of temporal claims in forest science.
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