Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations
National Forest Program - British Columbia Program
| Ground Plot Program |
|---|
The Ground Plot Program is made up of a sub-set of the grid intersections from the Photo Plot Program. A selection of the forested grid points, randomly chosen from throughout the province, will be visited on the ground so that field data can be collected. Of the 2414 potential photo plots available in British Columbia, 268 will be visited in the Ground Plot Program.
The ground plots are permanently established, with geo-referenced locations and tagged trees. This will enable changes to the forest to be monitored over time. Plots are hidden from general view as much as possible so that their location on the ground does not influence any management activities that occur in proximity to the plot (Figure 2).
 | Figure 2 Ground plots are not physically protected or openly demarcated. Vegetation may thus be removed or otherwise altered to reflect current management practices |
Plot locations may fall on Crown land (including provincial parks and protected areas), private land, forest woodlots, Tree Farm Licences, and community watersheds. Permission is obtained from the land owner or Tree Farm licensee before any work is undertaken in the ground plot. All data collection is centred on a common plot location, and a combination of line transects and nested fixed-radius plots of varying size are used for the collection of timber, ecological, and site information.
| Figure 3. The monitoring of growth measured in individual trees, succession changes in non-tree vegetation characteristics, and mortality in individual trees will take place in the ground plots. |
 |
The types of current data that can be reported include mensurational information, such as the volume per hectare and basal area of the timber; the average age and height of the dominant trees in the plot; and the average stem diameter.
Data on species presence and the relative amounts of shrubs and herbs will also be available, as will information on shrub and herb biomass at the time of measurement. After the first remeasurement cycle, it will be possible to report on changes within individual plots and the change overall in all plots.
The first measurements for the Ground Plot Program were started in the summer of 2000.