Key Indexes

Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations

Vegetation Resources Inventory Data Management

News

January 2012

  • Changes to the Provincial Forest Cover in the 2011 Projection.

    Forest Analysis and Inventory Branch (FAIB) is pleased to announce that the 2011 Provincial Forest Cover Data is currently available in the Land and Resource Data Warehouse (LRDW).  The Forest Cover has now been updated to reflect changes in stand volume and above ground biomass due to harvest and growth for 2011.  The Provincial Forest Inventory contains 4.3 million polygons.  Changes to the inventory in this release include approximately 300 mapsheets of new VRI Photo Estimation and approximately 50,000 polygons updated to reflect harvesting activities reported through RESULTS.  In addition, approximately 970,000 polygons or 15 m hectares have volume reductions to account for the impact of Mountain Pine Beetle on the forest cover.

    The provincial Forest Cover is represented to most users as the VEG_COMOP_LYR_R1_POLY, the VEG_COMP_LYR_L1_POLY and the VEG_COMP_LYR_12_POLY.  There are no changes to these file structures and data models for the 2011 projection.

    There are changes to account for stand mortality due to Mountain Pine Beetle.  Conversion of live standing volume to dead volume follow predictions made using the provincial MPB model and the 2010 aerial overview surveys.  The Year of Disturbance for this stand mortality is determined using satellite image analysis to determine the Year of Death.  The loss predictions were applied to the individual forest cover polygons to provide an analysis ready dataset for strategic decision makers.

    Information on the Provincial Mountain Pine Beetle prediction model is found here:  http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hre/bcmpb/

Older News

  • Changes to the Provincial Forest Cover in the 2010 Projection.  The VRI Data is available online.  This document describes changes to the VEG_COMP_LYR_R1_POLY made during the 2010 projection.  In addition to the continued modelling of Mountain Pine Beetle impacts begun in the 2009 projection, the 2010 projection features the inclusion of four new attributes describing the above ground biomass at the polygon level.  For more information, download the document [here].  For further information on Volume to Biomass download report [here].  June 2011
  • Download entire Provincial VRI Veg Comp Poly Rank 1 Layer Dataset as a single file geo-database.  For instructions [download] here.  Posted 26 January 2010.
  • Resource Inventory History database will be removed from the distribution services.  This information is out of date and is duplicated in the Veg_Comp data for distribution.  Posted 22 January 2010
  • Ownership coverage currently available for internal and external to government data users. It is found in the LRDW at whse_forest_vegetation.f_own. This data is also available for download through the Data Distribution Services using GEO BC http://geobc.gov.bc.ca/.

    This ownership data replaces the data compiled up to 1985 for the Forest Inventory Planning (FIP) files and is generalized from information supplied by Integrated Registries Branch, Ministry of Agriculture and Lands. It follows the same data model as the outdated information it replaces.  For more information on this data follow this link:

https://apps.gov.bc.ca/pub/geometadata/metadataDetail.do?from=search&edit=true&showall=showall&recordSet=ISO19115&recordUID=32950

Documentation can be down load [here]

  • Forest Analysis and Inventory Branch (FAIB) is pleased to announce that the new Provincial Forest Cover Data is currently available in the Land and Resource Data Warehouse (LRDW).

    The data layers have undergone a number of changes that while improving its usability will impact some who have become familiar with this data structure over the last three years.

    Download document changes to attributes [download]

Director's Announcement on Letter Provincial Forest Cover Data [download]

  • Forest Analysis and Inventory Branch has opened access to VRI data to the public by making it freely accessible and available via the internet.  Digital Data Exchange Agreements are no longer needed. The data distribution is provided through the Natural Resource Information Center  (NRIC) website.  Since making this data available about 6 gigabytes of VRI data have been downloaded each month.