Access Management Plan: In British Columbia, an operational plan identifying the requirements for all road construction, reconstruction, maintenance, and deactivation.
Advance regeneration: Seedlings or young trees that have developed in the understorey of a forest.
Afforestation: The process of converting open land into forest.
Age Class: Any interval into which the age range of trees, forests, stands or forest types is divided for classification and use.
Alienation: Any land that has had its "right-to-use" transferred from the Crown through grant, lease, or permit. Land designated in this way may be permanent or temporary.
Allowable annual cut (AAC): The volume of timber approved to be harvested annually.
Anadromous: Describing fish that spawn in freshwater and migrate to sea to grow to maturity.
Banned forests: Forests that are protected to maintain or build biodiversity. There are two types:
Basal area: The area of the cross-section of tree stems near their base, generally at breast height and including bark.
Biogeoclimatic Ecosystem Classification (BEC): A hierarchical classification system with three levels of integration: regional, local, and chronological; and combining climatic, vegetation, and site factors.
Biogeoclimatic zone: A large geographic area with a broadly homogeneous macroclimate. Each zone is named after one or more of the dominant climax species of the ecosystems in the zone and a geographic or climatic modifier.
Biological control: The use of biotic agents such as insects, nematodes, fungi, and viruses for the control of weeds and other forest pests.
Biological diversity (biodiversity): The diversity of plants, animals, and other living organisms in all their forms and levels of organization, including genes, species, ecosystems, and the evolutionary and functional processes that link them.
Biotope: A limited ecological region or niche in which the environment is suitable for certain forms of life.
Blowdown (windthrow): Uprooting by the wind. Also refers to a tree or trees so uprooted.
Borrow pit: An excavation usually made alongside a road in order to obtain gravel or other material for use in road construction or surfacing.
Brushing: A silviculture activity using chemical, manual, grazing, or mechanical means to control competing forest vegetation and reduce competition for space, light, moisture, and nutrients with crop trees or seedings.
Catchment basin: A hole dug adjacent to a culvert inlet to allow coarser particles to settle out.
Clearcutting: A silvicultural system that generally removes an entire stand in a single harvest, creating a fully exposed area with a distinct microclimate. The previous stand is replaced with an even-aged crop of new trees through planting and/or natural regeneration (including advance regeneration).
Clearcutting with reserves: A variation of the clearcutting system which retains a variable number of reserve trees, either uniformly or in small groups, for purposes other than regeneration.
Commercial thinning: A partial cut in older immature stands where trees have reached merchantable size and value, carried out to provide an interim harvest while maintaining or restoring a high rate of growth on well-spaced final crop trees.
Community watershed: In British Columbia, watersheds that have a drainage area no greater than approximately 500 km2, and that are licensed for community water use by the Water Management Branch of the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks. They include municipal and other waterworks and water use communities. Water user communities, as defined in the Water Act, have six or more licensed water users (registered with the Water Management Branch) extracting water form the same source. The district manager, in agreement may identify other watersheds as community watersheds.
Competing vegetation: Vegetation that uses the common resources (space, light, water, and nutrients) of a forest site that are also used by crop trees.
Conventional ground skidding: Any combination of rubber-tired or tracked skidding equipment.
Conventional logging: Any combination of mechanical or hand felling and rubber-tired or tracked skidding equipment. In the interior, cable logging is not considered conventional; on the coast, it is.
Corduroyed trail: A trail constructed by placing logs transversely along a road, usually with branches intact, and covering with fill material to "suspend" the road over soft subsoils.
Coup: An area of forest of variable size, shape and orientation from which logs for sawmilling or other industrial processing aree harvested. Australian term for cutblock. Dispersed coupes are, therefore, cutblock areas dispersed throughout the forest.
Critical wildlife habitat: Part of all of a specific place occupied by a wildlife species or a population of such species and recognized as being essential for the maintenance of the population.
Cultural heritage resources: Archaeological sites, First Nations traditional use sites, and structural features and landscape features of cultural or historic significance.
Culvert: A pipe, pipe arch, or log structure covered with soil and lying below the road surface, used to carry water from one side of the road to the other.
Cut control: A set of rules and actions specified in the Forest Act that describes the allowable variation in the annual harvest rate either above or below the allowable annual cut approved by the chief forester.
Cutblock: A specific area, with defined boundaries, authorized for harvest.
Cutting permit: In British Columbia, a legal document issued under the Forest Act of British Columbia that authorizes the holder to harvest trees.
Damaged timber: Timber that has been affected by injurious agents such as wind (as in the case of blowdown), fire, insects, or disease.
Deactivation: Measures taken to stabilize roads and logging trails during periods of inactivity, including the control of runoff, the removal of sidecast where necessary, and the re-establishment of vegetation for permanent deactivation.
Decennial inventory: An inventory conducted every ten years.
Deferred area: An area in which operations are restricted for a specific period of time.
Deleterious substance: Any substance that, if added to water, would degrade or alter the quality of the water so that it becomes deleterious to fish or fish habitat, or becomes unsuitable for human consumption or any other purpose for which it is legally licensed (such as irrigation and livestock watering).
Demanding species: Species that require large areas of favourable habitat to survive.
Designated skid road/skid trail: A pre-planned network of skid roads or skid trails to which forestry equipment traffic may be restricted.
Designated wilderness: In British Columbia, a part of the provincial forest designated as a wilderness area by order-in-council under authority of the Forest Act.
Desired plant community: A plant community that produces the kind, proportion, and amount of vegetation necessary for meeting or exceeding the land use plan or plan objectives established for an ecological site. The desired plant community must be consistent with the site's capability to produce the desired vegetation through management, land treatment, or a combination of the two.
Devastated forest: A forest in which the regenerative capacity has been destroyed.
Difficult site: Forest sites with environmental conditions that are unfavourable for tree establishment and growth.
District manager: In British Columbia, the manager of a Forest Service district office, with responsibilities as outlined in the Forest Act, Ministry of Forests Act, and Range Act.
Drainage structures: Include metal and wooden culverts, open-faced culverts, bridges, and ditches.
Ecological units: Areas of land with similar biological, geological, and climatic environments.
Ecologically suitable species: Coniferous or deciduous tree species that are naturally adapted to a site's environmental conditions, including the variability in these conditions that may occur over time.
Ecosystem: A functional unit consisting of all the living organisms (plants, animals, and microbes) in a given area, and all the non-living physical and chemical factors of their environment, linked together through nutrient cycling and energy flow. An ecosystem can be of any size--a log, pond, field, forest, or the earth's biosphere--but it always functions as a whole unit. Ecosystems are commonly described according to the manor type of vegetation, for example, forest ecosystem, old-growth ecosystem, or range ecosystem.
Edge effect: Habitat conditions (such as degree of humidity and exposure to light or wind) created at or near the boundary between ecosystems, as, for example, between open areas and adjacent forest.
End Hauling: Moving excavated material from one section of the road to another or to a disposal site, during road construction or modification.
Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESAs): Areas requiring special management attention to protect scenic values, fish and wildlife resources, historical and cultural values, and other natural systems or processes. ESAs for forestry include potentially fragile, unstable soils that may deteriorate unacceptably after forest harvesting, and areas of high value to non-timber resources such as fisheries, wildlife, water, and recreation.
Even-aged silvicultural system: A silvicultural system that is designed to regenerate and maintain an even-aged stand. Clearcutting, seed tree, and shelterwood are even-aged systems.
Even-aged stand: A stand of trees containing one or two age classes. Each age class represents an approximate range of 20% of the rotation length.
Excavated or bladed trails: Trails that are excavated or bladed to a depth greater than 30 cm into the mineral soil and greater than 1.5 m wide and greater than 5 m in length.
Existing visual condition: The present level of landscape alteration caused by resource development activities and expressed in terms of the visual quality objective categories.
Felling and bucking: The process of cutting down standing timber and then cutting it into specific lengths for yarding and hauling.
Fire hazard: The potential fire behavior of a given fuel type, regardless of its moisture content or resistance to fireguard construction. Assessment is based on physical characteristics, such as fuel arrangement, fuel load, condition of herbaceous vegetation, and presence of elevated fuels.
Fire impact: The amount of forest fuel consumption that occurs as a result of a wildfire or prescribed fire. Fire impact is generally measured as the degree of reduction of the original woody fuels and forest floor materials and/or the degree of mineral soil exposure on the forest floor.
Fire season: In British Columbia, fire season is from April 15 to October 15, or any other period ordered by the Lieutenant Governor in Council.
Fireguard: A strategically planned barrier, either manually or mechanically constructed, intended to stop a fire or retard its rate of spread and from which suppression action is carried out to control a fire; the constructed portion of a control line.
First pass: The first of two or more planned entries over a specific period of time (usually one rotation) to harvest timber.
Fish-bearing waters: Lakes, streams, and ponds that have resident fish populations.
Fisheries-sensitive zone: In British Columbia a fisheries sensitive zone means side and back channels, ponds, swamps, seasonally flooded depressions, lake littoral zones and estuaries that are seasonally occupied by over-wintering anadromous fish.
Fisheries stream class A: In British Columbia, streams or portions of streams that are frequented by anadromous salmonids and/or resident game fish or regionally significant fish species; or streams that have been identified for fishery enhancement in an approved fishery management plan.
Flood discharge criteria: The volume of flood that a bridge or culvert must be designed to accommodate.
Floodplain: A level, low-lying area adjacent to streams that is periodically flooded by stream water. It includes lands at the same elevation as areas with evidence of moving water, such as active or inactive flood channels, recent fluvial soils, sediment on the ground surface or in tree bark, rafted debris, and tree scarring.
Forage: Available browse and herbage that may provide food for grazing and browsing animals.
Forest cover: Forest stands or cover types consisting of a plant community made up of trees and other woody vegetation, growing more or less closely together.
Forest Development Plan: An operational plan guided by the principles of integrated resource management (the consideration of timber and non-timber resource values), which details the logistics of timber harvesting usually over a period of five years. Methods, schedules, and responsibilities for accessing, harvesting, renewing, and protecting forest resources are set out to enable site-specific operations to proceed.
Forest ecosystem network: A planned landscape zone that serves to maintain or restore the natural connectivity within a landscape unit. A forest ecosystem network consists of a variety of fully protected areas, sensitive areas, classified areas, and old-growth management areas.
Forest health: The vigour or physiological condition of a forest.
Forest health treatments: The application of techniques to influence pest or beneficial organism populations, mitigate damage, or reduce the risk of future damage to forest stands. Treatments can be proactive (for example, spacing trees to reduce risk of attack by bark beetles) or reactive (for example, spraying insecticides to treat outbreaks of spruce budworm).
Forest land: In British Columbia, provincial forests and other unalienated Crown lands for which the Ministry of Forests is responsible, including both forested lands and non-forested lands such as tundra, wetlands, rangelands, deserts, rock, and ice.
Forest officer: In British Columbia a Forest Officer is a person employed by the B.C. Ministry of Forests who is designated by the minister, chief forester, or regional manager to be a forest officer, through name or title.
Forest practice: Any activity that is carried out on forest land to facilitate the use of forest resources, including but not limited to timber harvesting, road construction, silviculture, grazing, recreation, pest control, and wildfire suppression.
Forest resources: Resources or values associated with forest land, including but not limited t water, wildlife, fisheries, recreation, timber, range, and heritage.
Free use permits: In British Columbia, an agreement entered into under Part 3, Division 8 of the Forest Act, which provides for the cutting and utilization of Crown timber for very specific purposes, free of stumpage assessment.
Free-growing crop: A crop of healthy trees with growth unimpeded by competition from plants, shrubs, or other trees.
Fuel management: The planned manipulation or reduction of forest fuels for forest management and other land use objectives by: prescribed fire; mechanical, chemical, or biological means; or alteration of the stand structure and species composition.
Green tree retention: The deferral of live trees of a specific species and size from harvesting, to achieve a site-specific objective.
Green-up: The minimum height and stocking levels which trees on a cutblock must achieve before an adjacent stand of timber may be harvested.
Group selection: An uneven-aged silvicultural system in which trees from a stand are removed and regenerated in small groups. The size of each group, or small opening, is usually no large than twice the height of mature trees. The objective of group selection is to manage an entire block, or stand, as a composite of various aged groups of trees.
Guidebooks: In British Columbia, part of the Forest Practices Code but not included in the legislation. Guidebooks support the Regulations by stipulating detailed tolerances and evaluation criteria and by providing recommended procedures, processes, and results. Guidebooks may also contain new guidelines and recommendations which are still being tested or are awaiting formal approval. Specifications provided by Guidebooks become legally enforceable when inserted in plans, prescriptions, and contracts.
Harvest pattern: The spatial distribution of cutblocks and reserve areas across the forested landscape.
Harvest rate: The rate at which timber is harvested, commonly expressed as an allowable annual cut (AAC).
Harvesting (logging): Forest harvesting activities including felling, yarding (skidding), hauling, and road building; the cutting and removal of trees from a forested area.
Harvesting method: The mix of felling, bucking, and yarding (skidding) systems used in logging a stand of timber.
Hauling: A general term describing the transport of logs from one point to another, usually from a landing to the mill or shipping point.
Heritage areas: Sites of historical, architectural, archaeological, paleontological, or scenic significance to the province.
High hazard (forest health): Physical characteristics (including tree species, composition, age, and size) and biogeoclimatic factors that make a forest highly susceptible to attack by damaging agents.
Higher-level plans: Strategic or operational plans that provide direction to any lower level of plans, prescriptions, or forest practices.
Hygiene Logging: In Western Australia, a method of logging used to prevent the spread of Jarrah dieback disease, that includes the physical and temporal separation of logging operations such as skidding and loading, washdown of equipment, machinery and vehicles when entering or leaving a dieback infested area, and conducting most harvesting operations during dry soil conditions to prevent the movement of moist soil.
Immature timber: Stands of timber where the age of the leading species in a stand is less than the specified cutting age. Cutting ages are established to meet forest management objectives. Usually stands with lodgepole pine and whitebark pine or a deciduous species as the leading species are considered as immature timber when the stand age is less than 81 years. Otherwise, all stands having conifers other than lodgepole pine and whitebark pine as the leading species are immature when the stand age is less than 121 years.
Impact assessment: A study of the effect of resource development on other resources.
Industrial operation: Operations such as land clearing, timber harvesting, timber processing, mechanical site preparation and other silvicultural treatments, mining, and road construction.
Integrated resource management: The identification and consideration of all resource values--including social, economic, and environmental needs--in land use decision-making. It focuses on resource and land management, and is based on a good knowledge of ecological systems, the capability of the land, and the mixture of possible benefits.
Interpretive forest site: In British Columbia, a designated forest site and ancillary facilities managed by the B.C. Ministry of Forests to interpret, demonstrate, or facilitate the discussion of the natural environment, forest practices, and integrated resource management.
Invertebrates: Creatures without a backbone (vertebrae); eg., insects, worms, slugs, spiders, crustaceans.
Jarrah: Eucalyptus tree species Eucalyptus marginata, which grows in Australia.
Jarrah dieback: In Western Australia, a disease of certain species of vegetation, including jarrah, caused by the root rotting fungus Phytophthora cinnamomi, and which is spread by the movement of soil.
Karri: Eucalyptus tree species Eucalyptus diversicolor, which grows in Australia.
Key species: Forage species that must, because of their high degree of use, be considered in the management program.
Lakeshore management area: In British Columbia, an area established adjacent to a lake, in which forest practice standards are designed to maintain the unique combination of fish, wildlife, water, and recreation values that occur on and around lakes.
Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP): In British Columbia, a strategic, multi-agency, integrated resource plan at the subregional level. It is based on the principles of enhanced public involvement, consideration of all resource values, consensus-based decision-making, and resource sustainability.
Landscape inventory: The identification, classification, and recording of the location and quality of visual resources and values.
Landscape unit: In British Columbia, a planning area, up to 100 000 ha in size, based on topographic or geographic features such as a watershed or series of watersheds. They are established by the district manager.
Landscape unit objectives: Objectives established for a landscape unit to guide forest development and other operational planning. Landscaping objectives are established by the district manager and a designated B.C. Environment official.
Leave trees: All trees, regardless of species, age, or size, prescribed to be retained on a harvested area to address specified silviculture or resource management objectives.
Licence to cut: In British Columbia, an agreement under the Forest Act allowing a person who purchases or occupies land, and who does not otherwise have the right to harvest Crown timber from the land, to cut and/or remove timber on the land.
Lignotuber: A swelling on a tree at or just below the ground which is made up of a mass of dormant buds and food reserves.
Linear developments: Industrial developments that are typical of power lines, highways, gas lines, and seismic activities.
Littoral zone: The shore zone between the high and low water mark.
Local Resource Use Plan (LRUP): In British Columbia, a strategic plan for a portion of a timber supply area or tree farm licence that provides management guidelines for integrating resource use in the area.
Logging Plan: An operational plan that details how, when, and where timber will be harvested from an area and describes the measures that will be taken to ensure that the applicable standards and obligations stated in the Silviculture Prescription and the harvesting agreement are met.
Logging trail: A narrow, temporary trail used by harvesting equipment within a cutblock.
Management zone: In British Columbia, the outer portion of a riparian management area situated adjacent to a stream, lake, or wetland and established to conserve and maintain the productivity of aquatic and riparian ecosystems when harvesting is permitted.
Marine-sensitive zones: Herring spawning areas, shellfish beds, marsh areas, juvenile salmonid rearing areas, and adult salmon holding areas.
Mass wasting: Movement of soil and surface materials by gravity.
Mature timber: Stands of timber where the age of the leading species in a stand is greater than the specified cutting age. Cutting ages are established to meet forest management objectives. Usually stands with lodgepole pine or a deciduous species as the leading species are classified as mature timber when the stand age is greater than 80 years. Otherwise, all stands having conifers other than lodgepole pine and whitebark pine as the leading species are mature when the stand age is greater than 120 years.
Maximum density: The maximum allowable stand density above which stands must be spaced to a target density of well-spaced acceptable stems to achieve free-growing status.
Minimum utilization standard: Included in every licence authorizing the harvesting of timber, a standard which is expressed as a maximum stump height, diameter at stump height, and top diameter and which can vary by species and timber supply area (and supply blocks within timber supply areas).
Mixed species stands: Any stand composed of two or more tree species.
Motorized access and use: Refers to access and use by, for example, float planes, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, motorboats, motor bikes, all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, and motorized equipment.
Multiple use: The use of land, especially forest land, for several different purposes. Some types of use are compatible with each other, but others may not be compatible, in which case it is necessary to set a priority or even exclusive use for a particular area.
Natural boundary: The visible high water mark of any lake, stream, or other body of water where the presence and action of the water are so common and usual and so long continued in all ordinary years as to mark upon the soil of the bed of the lake, river stream, or other body of water a character distinct from that of the banks, both in vegetation and in the nature of the soil itself.
Natural disturbance regimes: The historic patterns (frequency and extent) of fire, insects, wind, landslides, and other natural processes in an area.
Natural regeneration: The renewal of a forest stand by natural seeding, sprouting, suckering, or layering.
Natural resource: Land, water and atmosphere, their mineral, vegetable and other components, and including flora and fauna on or in them.
Non-designated wilderness: In British Columbia, areas within the provincial forest that have been zoned as wilderness through approved integrated resource management plans.
Non-timber resource values: Values within the forest other than timber which include but are not limited to biological diversity, fisheries, wildlife, minerals, water quality and quantity, recreation and tourism, cultural and heritage values, and wilderness and aesthetic values.
Not satisfactorily restocked (NSR): Productive forest land that has been denuded and has not been regenerated to the specified or desired free-growing standards for the site.
Noxious weeds: In British Columbia, any weed so designated by the Weed Control Regulations and identified on a regional district noxious weed control list.
Old growth: Old growth is a forest that contains live and dead trees of various sizes, species, composition, and age class structure. Old-growth forests, as part of a slowly changing but dynamic ecosystem, include climax forests but not sub-climax or mid-serial forests. The age and structure of old growth varies significantly by forest type and from one biogeoclimatic zone to another.
Old-growth attributes: Structural features and other characteristics of old-growth forests, including: large trees for the species and site; wide variation in tree sizes and spacing; accumulations of large dead standing and fallen trees; multiple canopy layers; canopy gaps and understory patchiness; elements of decay such as broken or deformed tops or trunks and root decay; and the presence of species characteristic of old growth.
Operable land: All lands that are not considered inoperable lands (see Inoperable lands).
Operating area: Geographic sub-units of timber supply areas that have been assigned to individual major licensees for the purposes of long-term planning. The boundaries are subject to change as the timber profile within a timber supply area changes over time.
Operational plans: Within the context of area-specific management guidelines, operational plans detail the logistics for development. Methods, schedules, and responsibilities for accessing, harvesting, renewing, and protecting the resource are set out to enable site-specific operations to proceed.
Outsloping (of roads or tracks): the formation of a road or track surface to provide slope or camber so that water will drain from it.
Partial cutting: A general term referring to silvicultural systems other than clearcutting, in which only selected trees are harvested. Partial cutting systems include seed tree, shelterwood, selection, and clearcutting with reserves.
Pest: Any forest health factor designated as detrimental to effective resource management.
Pesticide buffer zone: In British Columbia, a strip of land between the 10 m pesticide-free zone and the pesticide treatment area designed to prevent entry of pesticides or pesticide residues by drift, runoff, or leachate into the pesticide-free zone.
Pesticide-free zone (PFZ): In British Columbia, a strip of land, usually 10 m in width, adjacent to waterbodies. Pesticides may not be directly applied to, or allowed to reach, the zone via drift, runoff, or leachate. Specific authorization is needed if the pesticide-free zone is to be less than 10 m.
Plant community: An assemblage of plants occurring together at any point in time, thus designating no particular ecological status.
Potentially unstable soil area: Any area where there is a moderate to very high likelihood of slope failure following conventional road construction or timber harvesting.
Pre-commercial thinning (spacing): The removal of trees within a stand to control stocking, maintain or improve growth, increase wood value, or achieve other resource management objectives. Pre-commercial thinning does not yield commercially valuable trees.
Prescribed burning: The intentional application of fire to a specific unit of land to meet predetermined resource management objectives.
Procedure: A particular way of accomplishing an objective; generally refers to the method rather than the result. Procedures are usually developed to describe the methods for implementing policy.
Professional engineer, professional geoscientist: In British Columbia, a member in good standing of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia.
Protective Capacity of the Forest: A recognized function of the forest; to protect the people, wildlife and ecosystem components from damage. For example, forests in mountainous areas protect against soil erosion. Forest Practices in these areas must not reduce this protective capacity. Other protective functions include protecting communities from flooding or air pollution, and protecting biodiversity.
Provenance: The geographical area and environment to which the parent trees and other vegetation are native, and within which their genetic constitution has been developed through natural selection.
Public: The entire population of a jurisdiction, including all organizations, companies, and groups. Pyrethroids: Botanical insecticide, derived from chrysanthemum flowers.
Range development: Any development, treatment, or structure designed to achieve or maintain the desired plant community.
Range readiness: The stage of plant growth at which grazing may begin under a specific management plan without permanent damage to vegetation or soil.
Range type: A defined area with specific physical characteristics, which differs from other areas in its ability to produce distinctive kinds and amounts of vegetation and in its response to management.
Range Use Plan: In British Columbia, an operational plan that describes the range and livestock management measures that will be implemented to ensure that range resources are protected and that the management objectives for other identified resource values are achieved.
Rangelands: A broad category of land characterized by native plant communities that are often associated with grazing. Rangelands are managed by ecological rather than agronomic methods.
Recreation: Any human physical or psychological revitalization achieved through the voluntary pursuit of leisure activities. Forest recreation includes the use and enjoyment of a forest or wildland setting, including heritage landmarks, developed facilities, and other biophysical features.
Recreation feature: Biological, physical, cultural, or historical features that have an ability to attract and sustain recreational use.
Recreation feature objective: A resource management objective which reflects how a recreational feature or features will be managed, protected, or conserved.
Recreation features inventory: The identification, classification, and recording of the types and locations of recreation features.
Recreation opportunity spectrum: A mix of outdoor settings based on remoteness, area size, and evidence of humans, which allows for a variety of recreation activities and experiences. The descriptions used to classify the settings are on a continuum and are described as: rural, roaded resource, semi-primitive motorized, semi-primitive non-motorized, and primitive.
Recreation resource: Any biological, physical, cultural, historical, scenic, or wilderness feature that has recreational significance or value, or any recreational facility.
Red-listed species: In British Columbia, threatened or endangered species as identified by the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks.
Referral: The process by which applications for permits, licences, leases, etc., made to one government agency by an individual or industry are given to another agency for review and comment.
Regeneration (reforestation): The renewal of a tree crop either by natural means (seeded on-site from adjacent stands or deposited by wind, birds, or animals) or by planted seedlings or direct seeding.
Regeneration delay: The maximum time allowed in a prescription, between the start of harvesting in the area to which the prescription applies, and the earliest date by which the prescription requires a minimum number of acceptable well-spaced trees per hectare to be growing in that area.
Regionally important species: In British Columbia, the regionally identified sensitive/vulnerable (blue-listed) species and those species not at risk but which require identification and protection of habitat critical at specific periods of their life cycle, and which are thus essential to the maintenance of their populations (e.g. moose, deer, and mountain goat).
Registered professional forester (RPF): In British Columbia, a person registered under the Foresters Act, who performs or directs works, services, or undertakings that require specialized knowledge, training, and experience in forestry.
Reserve zone: In British Columbia, the inner portion of a riparian management area situated adjacent to a stream, lake, or wetland and established to conserve and maintain the productivity of aquatic and riparian ecosystems when harvesting is not permitted.
Reserves: The retention of live or standing dead trees, pole size or larger, on site following harvest for purposes other than regeneration. Reserves can be uniformly distributed as single trees or left in small groups, and they can be used with any silvicultural system.
Residual stand structure: The age class or height structure of the stand or remaining trees after harvesting
Residue: The volume of timber left on the harvested area which meets or exceeds the size requirements but is below the log grade requirements of the minimum utilization standards in the cutting authority. It is part of the allowable annual cut for cut control.
Resource Agencies: In British Columbia, any government agency, ministry or department having jurisdiction over a resource that may be affected by any activity or operation proposed under a higher level plan or operational plan.
Resource features: Localized resource values or sites of special interest, such as caves, raptor-nesting trees, mineral licks, heritage sites, and recreation trails.
Resource management zone (RMZ): In British Columbia, an area established by the chief forester in accordance with any policy direction from Cabinet or designated ministers. Resource management zones are used to implement broad land use policy, as provided in land and resource management plans or other Cabinet-level directives. An RMZ might include a major travel corridor which has scenic values or an area managed for intensive timber production.
Resource values: Products or commodities associated with forest lands and largely dependent on ecological processes. These include, but are not limited to, water quality and quantity, forage, fish, wildlife, timber, recreation, energy, minerals, and cultural and heritage resources.
Retention: Retaining or saving a portion of the original stand in a cluster or clump.
Riparian area: The land adjacent to the normal high water line in a stream, river, or lake, extending to the portion of land that is influenced by the presence of the adjacent ponded or channelled water. Riparian areas typically exemplify a rich and diverse vegetative mosaic reflecting the influence of available surface water.
Riparian management area (RMA): In British Columbia, a classified area of specified width surrounding or adjacent to streams, lakes, riparian areas, and wetlands. The RMA includes, in many cases, adjacent upland areas. It extends from the top of the streambank (bank full height) or from the edge of a riparian area or wetland or the natural boundary of a lake outward to the greater of: 1) the specified RMA distance, 2) the top of the inner gorge, or 3) the edge of the flood plain. Where a riparian area or wetland occurs adjacent to a stream or lake, the RMA is measured from the outer edge of the wetland.
Riparian management zone (RMZ): In British Columbia, that portion of the riparian management area that is outside of any riparian reserve zone or if there is no riparian reserve zone, that area located adjacent to a stream, wetland, or lake of a width determined in accordance with Part 10 of the Forest Practices Code Act.
Riparian reserve zone: In British Columbia, that portion, if any, of the riparian management area or lakeshore management area located adjacent to a stream, wetland, or lake of a width determined in accordance with Part 10 of the Forest Practices Code Act.
Rotation: The planned number of years between the formation or regeneration of a tree crop or stand and its final cutting at a specified stage of maturity.
Safe fish passage: Safe passage of fish through culverts for the purposes of spawning, rearing or migration.
Salvage harvesting: Logging operations specifically designed to recover damaged timber (dead or in poor conditions) but still yield a wood product. Often carried out following fire or insect attack or windthrow.
Sedimentation: The process of subsidence and deposition by gravity of suspended matter carried in water; usually the result of the reduction of water velocity below the point at which it can transport the material in suspended form.
Seed tree silvicultural system: An even-aged silvicultural system in which selected trees (seed trees) are left standing after the initial harvest to provide a seed source for natural regeneration. Seed trees can be left uniformly distributed or in small groups. Although regeneration is generally secured naturally, it may be augmented by planting. Seed trees are often removed once regeneration is established or may be left as reserves.
Selection silvicultural system: A silvicultural system that removes mature timber either as single scattered individuals or in small groups at relatively short intervals, repeated indefinitely, where the continual establishment of regeneration is encouraged and an uneven-aged stand is maintained.
Selective logging: Removal of certain trees in a stand as defined by specific criteria (species, diameter at breast height, or height and form). It is analogous to "high grading." Not to be confused with the selection silvicultural system.
Sensitive slopes: Any slope identified as prone to mass wasting. See mass wasting.
Sensitive soils: Forest land areas that have a moderate to very high hazard for soil compaction, erosion, displacement, mass wasting or forest floor displacement.
Sensitive/vulnerable species: In British Columbia, species identified as "blue listed" by the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks. These are indigenous species that are not threatened but are particularly at risk.
Sensitive watershed: A watershed that is used for domestic purposes or that has significant downstream fisheries values, and in which the quality of the water resource is highly responsive to changes in the environment. Typically, such watersheds lack settlement ponds, are relatively small, are located on steep slopes, and have special concerns such as extreme risk of erosion.
Seral stage: A plant community that occurs at a particular stage of succession, which is the gradual change in the species composition of a community that produces a stable species composition if left undisturbed.
Shelterwood silvicultural system: A silvicultural system in which mature trees are removed in a series of cuts designed to establish a new even-aged stand under the shelter of remaining trees. Regeneration may be obtained naturally or by planting. Cuts may be done uniformly, in groups or in strips. The remaining mature trees provide protection, shelter, and a source of seed for developing regeneration. Shelterwood trees are often removed once regeneration is well established, but may be left as reserves.
Silvicultural system: A planned cycle of activities by which a forest stand, or group of trees, is harvested, regenerated and tended over time. Silvicultural systems used in British Columbia include clearcutting, seed tree, shelterwood, and selection. Each name reflects the type of stand structure created by harvesting.
Silviculture: The art and science of controlling the establishment, growth, composition, health, and quality of forests and woodlands. Silviculture entails the manipulation of forests and woodlands vegetation, in stands or on landscapes, to meet the diverse needs and values of landowners and society on a sustained basis.
Silviculture prescription: A site-specific plan describing the nature and extent of any timber harvesting and silviculture activities that are designed to achieve the required management objectives, including a free-growing stand to specified standards.
Silviculture Treatment: Any silviculture activity on forest stands to meet stand-specific objectives.
Single-tree selection: A silvicultural system in which new age classes are created by the removal of individual trees of all size classes, more or less uniformly throughout the stand to maintain an uneven-aged structure and other desired stand structure characteristics.
Site: An area described or defined by its biotic, climatic, and soil conditions in relation to its capacity to produce vegetation; the smallest planning unit.
Site-adapted forest: A forest that consists of trees and undergrowth species and densities of those species that would naturally be found associated with the local area climate, topography, soil type, and moisture regime.
Site preparation: The manual, mechanical, or chemical treatment of a site designed to create or maintain favourable micro-climate conditions conducive to the establishment, survival, and growth of regenerating trees. Treatments include chopping, disking, bedding, raking, burning, scarifying, and chemical spraying.
Site productivity: The inherent capabilities of a site to produce or provide the commodities or values for which the area will be managed in accordance with Section 4 of the Ministry of Forests Act, that is, timber, forage, recreation, fisheries, wildlife, and water.
Site sensitivity: An assessment of the susceptibility of a site to soil-degrading processes, such as soil compaction, erosion, mass wasting, and forest floor displacement.
Skid road: An excavated or bladed logging trail used by tracked or rubber-tired skidders to drag logs from the felling site to landing or roadside processing area.
Skid trail: A pathway travelled by ground skidding equipment while dragging logs to a landing. A skid trail differs from a skid road in that a skid trail is not excavated or bladed.
Skidding: The process of sliding and dragging logs from the stump to a landing, usually applied to ground-based operations.
Slash: The tree residue left on the ground as a result of forest and other vegetation being altered by forest practices or other land use activities. Slash includes material such as logs, splinters or chips, tree branches and tops, uprooted stumps, and broken or uprooted trees and shrubs.
Slope stability: Pertains to the susceptibility of slope to landslides and the likelihood of slope failure.
Smoke-sensitive area: An area of land, within which special measures will be taken to maintain the density of smoke below specified limits to address a variety of social objectives.
Snag: A standing dead tree or part of a dead tree from which at least the smaller branches have fallen.
Snigging: In Australia, the towing or winching of a log by a tractor or dozer from the stump to the landing site. See Skidding.
Snig Track: In Australia, the track along which logs are pulled from the felling point to a nearby landing. See skid trail.
Soil: The naturally occurring, unconsolidated mineral or organic material at the surface of the earth that is capable of supporting plant growth. It extends from the surface to 15 cm below the depth at which properties produced by soil-forming processes can be detected. The soil-forming processes are an interaction between climate, living organisms, and relief acting on soil and soil parent material. Unconsolidated material includes material cemented or compacted by soil-forming processes. Soil may have water covering its surface to a depth of 60 cm or less in the driest part of the year.
Soil disturbance: Changes caused by forest practices in the physical, chemical, or biological properties of the soil, including the organic forest floor and the mineral soil extending from the surface to the depth at which the unweathered parent materials is encountered. In British Columbia, the soil disturbance caused by a forest practice on an area covered by a silviculture prescription or stand management prescription including areas occupied by excavated or balded trails of a temporary nature, corduroyed trails, compacted areas, and areas of dispersed disturbance.
Soil erosion: The wearing away of the earth's surface by water, gravity, wind, and ice.
Spacing: The removal of undesirable trees within a young stand to control stocking, to maintain or improve growth, to increase wood quality and value, or to achieve other resource management objectives.
Stand: A community of trees sufficiently uniform in species composition, structure, age, arrangement, and condition and growing on a site of sufficiently uniform quality to be a distinguishable unit.
Stand composition: The proportion of each tree species in a stand expressed as a percentage of either the total number, basal area or volume of all tree species in the stand.
Stand Management Prescription: A site-specific plan describing the nature and extent of the silviculture activities that will occur on a free-growing stand to facilitate the achievement of, among others, social, economic, and environmental objectives.
Stand structure: The distribution of trees in a stand which can be described by vertical or horizontal spatial patterns, size of trees or tree parts, age or a combination of these.
Stand tending: A variety of forest management treatments, including spacing, fertilization, pruning, and commercial thinning, carried out at different stages during a stand's development.
Stocking: A measure of the area occupied by trees, usually measured in terms of well-spaced trees per hectare, or basal area per hectare, relative to an optimum or desired level.
Stocking standard: The required range of healthy, well-spaced, acceptable trees.
Stocking survey: The determination of the stocking of an area of both well-spaced and total trees; also used to generate an inventory label.
Strategic plan: A plan that provides objectives and strategies for land allocation and/or resource management, including regional plans, subregional plans, and local resource plans.
Stream: A watercourse, having an alluvial sediment bed, formed when water flows on a perennial or intermittent basis between continuous definable banks.
Streambank: The rising ground bordering a stream channel.
Stream channel: The streambed and banks formed by fluvial processes, including deposited organic debris.
Stumpage (assessment): In British Columbia, the price paid to the provincial government for timber harvested on Crown land.
Succession: The sequence of communities that progressively occupy an area over time; or the process by which these communities replace each other.
Sustainability: The concept of producing a biological resource under management practices that ensure replacement of the part harvested, by regrowth or reproduction, before another harvest occurs.
Sustainable forest use: Sustainable wood production and ecological sustainability (functioning of ecosystems and their long-term production capability should not be endangered).
Sustained yield: The yield that a forest can produce continuously at a given intensity of management without impairment of the productivity of the land. The intention is to balance timber growth and harvesting on a sustainable basis. A method of forest management that calls for an approximate balance between net growth and amount harvested.
Swidden agriculture: A traditional agriculture technique where natural vegetation was cut and burned prior to the planting of crops. Also called shifting cultivation because areas were cropped for a short time until productivity dropped, and then left fallow when settlers cleared another site.
Target stocking standards: The number of well-spaced acceptable trees per hectare that will, in normal circumstances, produce an optimum free-growing crop; the standards at which silviculture treatments are aimed.
Terrain: (i) a comprehensive term to describe a tract of landscape being studied with respect to its natural features; (ii) pertains to maps showing surficial materials, material texture, surface expression, present day geomorphological (geological) processes, and related features.
Terrain analysis: The process of terrain mapping and interpretation or assessment of terrain conditions for a specific purpose such as construction of logging roads or urban expansion.
Threatened or endangered habitats: Ecosystems that are:
Threatened or endangered species: In British Columbia, species identified as "red listed" by the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks; these are indigenous species that are either threatened or endangered.
Timber sale licence: In British Columbia, an agreement entered into under Part 3, Division (3) of the Forest Act. A timber sale licence usually defines a specific volume of timber to be harvested from a specific area. In special circumstances, an annual allowable cut (AAC) is specified.
Timber supply area: An area defined by an established pattern of wood flow from management units to the primary timber-using industries.
Treatment unit: The geographic unit of productive forest land area designated in a prescription for a specific silviculture activity or series of treatments.
Tree farm licence: In British Columbia, an agreement entered into under Part 3, Division 5 of the Forest Act. A tree farm licence provides for the establishment, management, and harvesting of timber in a described area (Crown and private land) on a sustained or perpetual yield basis.
Understory: Any plants growing under the canopy formed by other plants, particularly herbaceous and shrub vegetation under a tree canopy.
Uneven-aged silvicultural system: A silvicultural system designed to create or maintain and regenerate an uneven-aged stand structure. Single -tree and group selection are uneven-aged silvicultural systems.
Uneven-aged stand: A stand of trees containing three or more age classes. In a balanced uneven-aged stand, each age class is represented by approximately equal areas, providing a balanced distribution of diameter classes.
Utilization (of forage and browse): The level of forage and browse use on a site. For herbaceous species, it is measured as a percentage of the current year's growth removed; for browse species, it is measured as a percentage of stem ends removed.
Utilization standards: The dimensions (stump height, top diameter, base diameter, and length) and quality of trees that must be cut and removed from Crown land during harvesting operations.
Very unstable terrain: Terrain units classified as terrain stability class V. For these areas there is a high likelihood that slope failures will follow harvesting or conventional road building.
Vertebrates: Organisms with backbones.
Viewshed: A physiographic area composed of land, water, biotic, and cultural elements which may be viewed and mapped from one or more viewpoints and which has inherent scenic qualities and/or aesthetic values as determined by those who view it.
Visual absorption capability: The relative capacity of a landscape to absorb land-use alterations and still maintain its visual integrity.
Visual landscape inventory: The identification, classification, and recording of the location and quality of visual resources and values.
Visual landscape management: The identification, assessment, design, and manipulation of the visual features or values of a landscape, and the consideration of these values in the integrated management of provincial forest and range lands.
Visual quality objective (VQO): In British Columbia, a resource management objective that reflects the desired level of visual quality based on the physical characteristics and social concern for an area. The term refers to the degree of acceptable human alteration to the characteristic landscape.
Visual sensitivity: A component of the visual landscape inventory that estimates the sensitivity of the landscape based on the visual prominence or importance of features, conditions that affect visual perception, and social factors that contribute to viewer perceptions.
Waste: The volume of timber left on the harvested area that should have been removed in accordance with the minimum utilization standards in the cutting authority. It forms part of the allowable annual cut for cut-control purposes.
Watercourse: A natural stream or source or supply of water, whether usually containing water or not, such as a lake, river, creek, spring, ravine swamp, and gulch.
Watershed: Total region draining into a given waterway, lake, or reservoir; a drainage basin.
Watershed assessment: An evaluation of the present state of watersheds and the cumulative impact of proposed development on peak flows, suspended sediment, bedload, and stream channel stability within the watershed.
Wetland: Land that is saturated with water long enough to promote wetland or aquatic processes; indicated by poorly drained soils, hydrophillic vegetation, and biological activity that is adapted to a wet environment. Includes fens, swamps, marshes, and bogs.
Wilderness: An area of land generally greater than 1000 ha that predominantly retains its natural character and on which the impact of man is transitory and, in the long run, substantially unnoticeable.
Wilderness areas: In British Columbia, a part of the provincial forest designated by order-in-council as a wilderness area.
Wildfire: An unplanned or unwanted natural or human-caused fire, or a prescribed fire that threatens to escape its bounds.
Wildlife: Includes native wild mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fishes, native invertebrates, and plants considered to be vulnerable, threatened, or endangered.
Wildlife habitat areas: In British Columbia, units of habitat recommended for the maintenance, enhancement, or restoration of red-listed wildlife, threatened, and endangered habitats, and those species identified as being regionally important.
Wildlife trees: Dead, decaying, deteriorating, or other designated trees that provide present or future habitat for the maintenance or enhancement of wildlife.
Winter range: A range, usually at lower elevation, used by migratory deer, elk, caribou, moose, etc., during the winter months and typically better defined and smaller than summer range.
Woodland Grant Scheme: Legally binding five year plans that allow forestry operations to take place on private forest land in the United Kingdom.
Woodlot licence: In British Columbia, an agreement entered into under Part 3, Division 5 of the Forest Act. Similar to a tree farm licence but on a smaller scale, it allows for small-scale forestry to be practised in a described area (Crown and private) on a sustained or perpetual yield basis.
Yarding (yarding systems): In logging, the hauling of felled timber to the landing or temporary storage site from where trucks (usually) transport it to the mill site. Yarding methods include cable yarding, ground skidding, and aerial methods such as helicopter and balloon yarding.
