Forest Co-op Forest Inventory & Modeling Project
The Forest Co-op Forest Inventory & Modeling Project is a collaborative forestry pilot project with Bowater Canadian Forest Products Inc. and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. The project is designed to explore opportunities to improve Ontario's approach to forest information and wood supply analysis to achieve a broad range of objectives through forest management planning; the results of which could be applied across the province.
The team is investigating the use of new technologies and tools that can be used to improve our knowledge of the forest resource. These include:
- Evaluating and testing the use of remote sensing technology such as high resolution/low level aerial photography and satellite imagery to create the base information provided by the FRI (forest resource inventory).
- Evaluating the base level information to be provided to support the forest management needs of today.
- Identifying and assessing methods of inventory update and maintenance.
- Making recommendations on the incorporation of new inventory information into current plans.
Improving the quality of the FRI will allow forest planners to make more reliable estimates of wildlife habitat and wood supply.
The technical component of the project was completed in 2006. A second phase was initiated to determine the quality of the FRI product. This phase consisted of field checks to gather on-the-ground data. The data were compiled and the field results have been compared to the predicted values from the first phase of this project. A draft report will be available for partners to review in the first quarter of 2007 with final results expected later in the year.