Judging by the comments published in response to an opinion piece that Anthony Britneff and I co-wrote and that The Province newspaper published this week, there is growing concern within the ranks of the provincial Forest Service and in the professional forestry community over the current state of health of our publicly owned forests.
Inventories – the counting and assessment of plant life in our forests – is essential if we are to have any chance of managing the full range of values in our forests. If we don’t have sufficient information on what we have, we can’t hope to manage it in the public interest.
British Columbia’s publicly owned forests are an incredible asset, worthy of increased inventory efforts.
As Anthony and I note our Province op-ed:
If you had a stock inventory narrowly valued at $250 billion, would you want to know how quickly it is depleted and replenished?
That, by the way, is the estimated value of the available, commercially desirable trees in B.C.’s publicly owned forests. If you consider the additional values our forests have as carbon storehouses, the protector of water resources, the life-support system for numerous plants and animals and the source of tens of thousands of jobs, you could perhaps quadruple that value.
Ken Blagborne // May 14, 2011 at 2:14 pm
I have been involved with Forest Inventory since 1957 & at no time has the Provincial Inventory been in such sad shape.
The sad thing is I will not live long enough to see what the future holds. But do know for sure our grand children will be saying a lot of unkind things about us for the way we mis-managed our resources.
A small example of this is right here in Parksville/Qualicum Beach. They are drawing the ground water faster then it is being replaced.
Also because of the clear cut logging the Englishman River has more silt in it. The Oceanside area is now faced with spending $52 million to enlarge a dam & build a water filtration plant, & they say we have forest management.
Anonymous // May 18, 2011 at 8:07 am
Forests Minister Steve Thomson is on record in Hansard (see Monday, May 16, 2011) as justifying a totally inadequate inventory budget of $6.1 million — $16 million below the average budget in the 1990′s – on the basis of technology that the forests ministry pioneered and implemented in the 1980′s:
“Obviously, now with satellite imagery, low-level aerial flying and the GPS technology, we’re able to do a lot more with resources” said Thomson.
Since the 1980′s inventory technology has not fundamentally changed. The ministry still uses the same low-level aerial photography and Landsat satellite imagery.
Whoever fed Steve Thomson that line (one he also used in a letter to The Province, April 22, 2011) is either unqualified to advise the Minister on inventory or possibly deceitful in trying to cover the Minister’s behind.
anonymous // May 18, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Minister Thomson’s comments during the debate on forest inventory stated that 58% of the province was inventoried to the new standard. There is nothing new about VRI as it was introduced in 1993-94 or 17 years ago.
The units not yet inventoried to this “new” standard include the Arrowsmith, Lillooet, Merritt, Boundary, Cranbrook, Invermere, Robson Valley, Revelstoke, Kamloops, 100 Mile House, Lakes, Morice, Kispiox, Haida Gwaii, Cranberry, Nass, and Cassiar TSAs as well as significant portions of the Ft. Nelson, Kalum, and Williams Lake TSAs and several TFLs. With the exception perhaps of parts of the Cassiar and Ft. Nelson TSAs, the forests in these units are quite accessible and they are very significant in value.
By the time the Ministry gets these completed, the inventory of the first units done to the VRI standard will be at least 25 year out of date. The province needs to get back to an adequate and systematic inventory program with a $20-25 million annual budget.
anonymous // May 19, 2011 at 10:59 am
This comment is wrong on all points:
Quote: “Since the 1980′s inventory technology has not fundamentally changed. The ministry still uses the same low-level aerial photography and Landsat satellite imagery.”
-70mm “low-level” aerial film photography was used for inventory in the 80′s. Newer technologies like digital cameras and sub-metre GPS systems are now commonplace in 2011.
Landsat satellite imagery has NEVER been used for inventory in BC. High resolution satellite systems are now available and can be used for forest inventory.
anonymous // May 19, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Landsat is currently being used at the Branch to update disturbances. The Branch is not using higher reslution satellite data (too expensive for its benefits). The term low-level photography has different meanings. Here the comment was referring to 15:000 photo rather than the old 70mm 1:500-1:1000 photo. The new digital photo certainly does not make photo interpretation any easier and with the amount of frames over scanned 1:15000, didgital photo actually adds many more models so slows down the interpretation process on some softcopy systems.
JAG // May 20, 2011 at 10:21 am
35 years with the MoF Inventory Program and it is very sad to see how far it has regressed. I doubt there are much more than 5 actual, real VRI staff and a few remote sensing staff still working within the MoF that are actual experts in VRI. The budgets haven’t reflected the needs for Forest Inventory since the 1990′s; with MSRM being the biggest joke period of them all. The technology to do re-inventory to the VRI standard has not changed much since the mid 90′s when softcopy tech. was first introducted; yes there is work with landsat imagery that may provide an inventory at a reduced cost, but it is not proven to the VRI standard.
Forest Inventory is one of the most complex undertaking that the MOF preforms and is the foundation for many other programs within government and the private sector and to even suggest that 6 million a year and the current staff level come anywhere close to maintaining a proper forest inventory is rediculous. This government is not serving the public well if it continues to maintain that adequate funds have and are being spent in forestry.
Anthony Britneff // May 26, 2011 at 6:14 pm
During the early 1980’s, Dr. Robin Quenet, former manager of inventory methodology with the Ministry of Forests’ Inventory Branch, pioneered the application of Landsat satellite imagery for inventory update of depletions caused by logging, fire and pest infestations. This technology was implemented province-wide for the interim update of timber supply area inventories, which are designed to be re-surveyed every 10 years.
Landsat imagery has been continuously used since the early 1980’s for inventory update of depletions. And the same holds true today. Contrary to Minister Thomson’s spin, satellite imagery has never been used operationally for sampling, stratification and classification in forest inventory and virtually 100 per cent of all British Columbia’s forests are still classified (interpreted) using aerial photographs, not satellite images.
So, contrary to the minister’s assertions in Hansard (May 16) there have been no cost efficiencies associated with the ministry’s use of satellite imagery since the 1980’s. Nor do digital cameras and GPS technologies produce efficiencies in the order of $13.5 million a year, which is the difference between the average inventory budget of $8.8 million a year for the last decade and the average budget of $22.3 million a year for the 1990’s decade, as the minister implies. GPS merely improves the accuracy of flight lines and the placement of “photo centres”.
Over seventy-five per cent of the forest inventory has not been re-surveyed within ten years (see “The State of British Columbia’ Forests”, page 232), which is why the minister is unable to provide the full extent of inventory gross NSR and why his justification for this year’s inventory budget of $6.1 million is nonsense.
The state of the forest inventory of British Columbia has gone beyond crisis and is now in a state of complete collapse. The present operational budget ($6.1 million) and number of staff will ensure continued deterioration of the provincial inventory.
Also, this budget will likely be the last nail in the coffin for the private consulting sector as firms close their doors to inventory and the expertise and technical capacity to revive and rebuild British Columbia’s forest inventory become irretrievably lost.
But Minister Thomson still has time to correct course by increasing funding for forest inventory to levels that will retain expertise and technical capacity in the private sector thereby enabling the province to attain a current, reliable provincial forest inventory for which each management unit has been re-surveyed within ten years and is updated for depletions as needed within that re-survey cycle.
anonymous // May 30, 2011 at 2:24 pm
I’m not sure how you would quantify technological efficients in terms of dollars. It is not a straight-forward calculation by any means. Furthermore, the idea that more money will solve anything to do with a ‘more’ & ‘better’ inventory data is short-sighted. There has to be an efficient inventory model in place and more money can also mean more waste.
Siding in simple terms with the minister, I believe there have been technological advances in inventory since the 80′s.
Examples:
1. Satellite imagery for update – if this was done in the 80′s, as you say, it must have been prohibitively expensive due to hardware/software capabilities and even to purchase the data!).
“Commercialization proved troublesome, EOSAT had limited commercial freedom due to provisions of the 1984 law. Given these constraints, NOAA and then EOSAT raised image prices from $650 to $3700 to $4400 and restricted redistribution. While the U.S. monopoly of Landsat-like data made this 600% increase feasible, the practice priced out many data users.” [http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/about/landsat5.html]
Note: this data is now FREE.
2. Softcopy interpretation
3. GPS (improved accuracy of flight lines, photo centres and ground plot locations and access).
Anonymous // May 31, 2011 at 12:57 pm
I don’t think anyone in this string of comments would disagree that some technological advances have occurred since the 1980′s. The issue is whether or not those advances have provided cost efficiencies equivalent to the substantial cuts to inventory funding and staffing over the last decade. Given the steady deterioration of the inventory over that same decade, technological efficiencies fail to justify the cuts.
anonymous // May 31, 2011 at 1:48 pm
The current VRI photo interpretation system is an excellent forest inventory model which has been closely copied by most provinces and territories. Funding is the issue, not the model.
From 1988 to 2003+ the Inventory Branch had numerous update projects using Landsat transparencies and various ‘transferscope’ type instruments. One could be built for under $500.
Softcopy certainly does not speed up interpretation. With inital h/w and s/w costs along with licensing, maintenance, set-up file and imagery transfer costs, softcopy interpretation is certainly not a significant cost saver. It’s main benefits are image enhancement and height measurement capabilities and perhaps increased line placement accuracy.
GPS improves positional accuracies but hardly saves money.
anonymous // Jun 1, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Since same model is used in other provinces or territories, I’d be interested to know how much they spend on inventory annually? Does anyone have these figures?
Also, with respect to the landsat in 1988- $4400 per image X 50 images in the province equates to almost $250000 annually just for the data. Now that it is offered for free there must be some savings there but i admit not $13 million worth.