Forest Co-op Growth & Yield Historic Plot Project
The objective of this one-year, $780,000 program, known as the "Forest Co-op Ontario Growth and Yield Historic Plot Data Reconstruction and Spatial Compilation Project", was to amass, re-locate and verify growth and yield plots and enter all data into a spatially explicit relational database for access by forest managers in Ontario. The ultimate value of the work completed was estimated to be in the range of $2.3 million.
Through this project, a web-based repository of known and recently-rediscovered forest research plots and trials with accurate locations, has been successfully developed and implemented. The database holds the location data in a constantly updated form. In addition, it holds ecological summary and meta-data information for each of the plots contained in the dataset. This product will be available on the Internet in a user-friendly, form-based query structure.
This project is directly linked to the Forest Co-op Growth & Yield Permanent Growth Plot Programs as well as the Ontario Government's Provincial Terrestrial Assessment Program's Growth and Yield and Wildlife assessment programs.
This program and its resulting products will help forest managers build the capacity to plan for sustainable development of the forest resource. This forest data with long-term temporal inference will enhance and accelerate current monitoring and assessment and modeling projects. Complete, accurate and easily assessable spatially-based information will also be the key to developing sustainable management tools for our resources and ensuring that current and expected future investments in plot establishment, maintenance, re-measurement and the development of databases are not jeopardized through lack of knowledge concerning existing plot locations.