Cranbrook Golden Central Kootenay East Kootenay photo credit: IamJohnCE Rossland photo credit: Rod Lafond photo credit: Stephen Hui photo Kootenay Boundary Toward natural asset management in Kootenays British Columbia Summary of inventory results and recommendations March 2021 This document features interactive elements! Clicking on a heading or sub-heading in the Table of Contents (ToC) will take you directly to that page. Also, clicking on page numbers in the footer will bring you back to the ToC. photo credit: Ymblanter Municipal Natural Assets Initiative Invest in Nature The Municipal Natural Assets Initiative (MNAI) is a Canadian not-for-profit that is changing the way municipalities deliver everyday services - increasing the quality and resilience of infrastructure at lower costs and reduced risk. The MNAI team provides scientific, economic and municipal expertise to support and guide local governments in identifying, valuing and accounting for natural assets in their financial planning and asset management programs, and developing leading-edge, sustainable and climate-resilient infrastructure. Disclaimer While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the Report’s content, any statements made are made only as of the date of the Report and such information and data are subject to uncertainties, inaccuracies, limitations and to changes based on future events. Municipal Natural Assets Initiative makes no representations, warranties or guarantees (express, implied, statutory or otherwise) regarding the data on which the information is based or the information itself, including quality, accuracy, usefulness, fitness for any particular purpose, reliability, completeness or otherwise, and assumes no liability or responsibility for any inaccuracy, error or omission, or for any loss or damage arising in connection with or attributable to any action or decision taken as a result of using or relying on the information in the Report. Please cite as: Municipal Natural Assets Initiative. (2021). Toward Natural Asset Management in Kootenays British Columbia: Summary of inventory results and recommendations. Victoria, British Columbia, Canada MNAI.ca Copyright © 2021. Municipal Natural Assets Initiative. All rights reserved. Website: MNAI.ca Table of Contents 1 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 What are municipal natural assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Why manage natural assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 How to manage natural assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 What is a natural asset inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3 Local government context: Kootenay region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4 Structure of community sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 City of Cranbrook Mini-Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Natural asset inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Risk identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Town of Golden Mini-Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Natural asset inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Risk identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK) Mini-Report . . . . . . . . 36 Natural asset inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Risk identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 1 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) Mini-Report . . . . . . . . . . 49 Natural asset inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Risk identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) Mini-Report . . . . . . . 62 Natural asset inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Risk identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 City of Rossland Mini-Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Natural asset inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Risk identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Annex 1: Results of local government risk identification . . . . . . . . . 84 Annex 2: Moving to a full project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 2 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca 1 Purpose This report summarizes the results of a project to develop natural asset inventories with six local governments in the Kootenays region of southeastern British Columbia, and documents steps those local governments can take to proceed to implementing full natural asset management initiatives. 2 Introduction What are municipal natural assets The term municipal natural assets refers to the stock of natural resources or ecosystems that a municipality, regional district, or other form of local government could rely upon or manage for the sustainable provision of one or more local government services1. Why manage natural assets A growing number of local governments recognize that it is as important to understand, measure, manage and account for natural assets as it is for engineered ones. Doing so can enable local governments to provide core services such as stormwater management, water filtration, and protection from flooding and erosion, as well as additional services such as those related to recreation, biodiversity, health and culture. Outcomes of what is becoming known as municipal natural asset management can include cost-effective and reliable delivery of services, support for climate change adaptation and mitigation, and enhanced biodiversity. How to manage natural assets There are numerous ways for local governments to manage natural assets. The Municipal Natural Assets Initiative (MNAI) uses methodologies and tools rooted in standard asset management, and provides a range of advisory services to help local governments implement them. MNAI has developed the methods and tools with investments, piloting, refinement, peer review, and documentation of lessons in multiple Canadian provinces. MNAI’s mission is to make natural asset management a mainstream practice across Canada, and in support of this, for local governments to accept and use the methodologies and tools in standard ways across the country. 1 https://mnai.ca/media/2018/02/finaldesignedsept18mnai.pdf Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 3 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca What is a natural asset inventory Inventories provide details on the type of natural assets a local government relies upon2, their condition, and the risks they face. As depicted in Figure 1, a natural asset inventory is the first component of the Assessment phase. The Assessment phase, in turn, is the first of three phases of a full natural asset management project. By itself, an inventory will not give a sense of the value of services from natural assets or how to manage them; however, it is an essential first step in the full natural asset management project. Ongoing Adaptive Management DA I TE IE W O Assess Current State of Assets EV PL PE TE RA UN Integrate to Long-term Financial Plan E TO IN CO R P ED S N E T U R A L A SS E O R A A TS T NA INFO R Sustainable Service Delivery ET S CA FIN A ES NC ON ATI M S AS Implement Asset Management Practices Complete Natural Asset Condition Assessment ST AF TE DS TO IN NEE RAL ASS CORP ETS O N G TU FI NA IMP LEM EN T ENGAGE Assess Asset Management Practices SS SE AS Measure and Report CO M M Financial Plan For Natural Assets Natural Asset Inventory R Valuation of Natural Assets Asset Management Policy Asset Management Plan Asset Management Strategy PLAN Natural Asset Operations & Maintenance Plan Long-term Goals and Service Delivery Requirements from Natural Assets Figure 1: The Asset Management Process. MNAI has adapted this for use with natural assets. Source: Adopted from Asset Management BC, 2014. 2 Note that many local governments rely on services from natural assets they do not own. Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 4 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca 3 Local government context: Kootenay region General Several local governments in the Kootenays region of British Columbia are beginning to undertake municipal natural asset management. For example, the District of Sparwood (East Kootenay) and the City of Grand Forks (Kootenay Boundary) have both completed full Municipal Natural Assets Initiative projects3. Most recently, the Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK), Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK), Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB), City of Cranbrook, Town of Golden, and City of Rossland (together called the “project communities”) decided to work with MNAI to develop a preliminary natural asset inventory. The results of this effort are the subject of this project report. The impetus for the project communities to develop natural asset inventories was their engagement in a State of Climate Adaptation and Resilience in the Basin (SoCARB) indicator suite project. In collaboration with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and Selkirk College, SoCARB indicators were designed to provide data and insights relating to climate change, including local environmental and community impacts, and community impacts as well as information to help build adaptive capacity and track local actions4. The SoCARB project prompted interest on the part of Selkirk College and the project communities to explore the role of natural assets within climate change adaptation. This led to MNAI hosting a webinar in May 2020 to introduce natural asset management to the project communities, and Selkirk College requesting MNAI to support them in developing a preliminary natural assets inventory. The term “preliminary” in this context denotes that (a) within the available budget it was not possible to undertake detailed condition assessments and full risk identifications; and (b) geographic scoping was required in each community given that the Kootenays region covers an area of ~86,000 km². The SoCARB reports provide extensive community background. For example, the report notes that with respect to climate change:  The climate in the Kootenays is demonstrably changing, with data showing trends toward higher average annual and seasonal temperatures.  Total annual precipitation is increasing. 3 See: MNAI.ca 4 Excerpted from State of Climate Adaptation Regional District of Central Kootenay Area H March 2020 Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 5 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca  The number of days annually when the temperature exceeds the 90th percentile for the baseline period (1961-1990) is increasing.  There are more days with heavy rainfall. The SoCARB report also notes:  Glacier extent in the Canadian Columbia Basin declined by 15 per cent from 1985 to 2005 and glaciers are projected to mostly disappear by 2100.  The amount of spring snowpack is declining. While this report provides insights into the inventories, it is important to note that MNAI provided each community with their own versions of the actual inventory, in both tabular and dashboard formats. Both the registry and the dashboard can be expanded as new information becomes available. Most local governments rely on services from For example, asset condition might improve as a at least some natural assets they do not own or result of restoration efforts, or new studies may have jurisdiction over. add insights on the condition of the assets. The level of desired detail may also evolve as asset Therefore, it is vital to include with the scope of management readiness increases, or as areas natural asset management the natural assets of natural management focus emerge. However, they rely on, not just the ones they own. inventories should grow in detail and sophistication only insofar as they remain aligned with the A range of collaborative options may be availcapacity of the communities to maintain them, and able to manage natural assets that are not the uses to which they will be put. Their evolution owned by local government. and development should be a function of the monitoring, reporting and lessons of the asset management cycle and be driven by the imperative of ensuring sustainable, cost-effective delivery of services to the community, which is at the core of asset management. TITLE, OWNERSHIP AND JURISDICTION 4 Structure of community sections The project communities worked with MNAI as one group; however, this report is divided into six “mini-reports” with data specific to each of the six communities. Each of the six mini-reports is organized in a consistent manner with the following five sections: 1/ Information on local government readiness for asset management. MNAI helps local governments determine their overall state of asset management maturity and helps them build asset management capacity across departments. To do this, it has adapted the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM)’s asset management readiness Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 6 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca assessment tool5 for use with natural assets. MNAI’s adapted tool helps local governments measure progress on asset management in four competency areas (policy and governance, people and leadership, data and information, and planning and decision making), with each area describing outcomes based on five levels of progress or maturity. The completed natural asset readiness assessment will, in turn, help the local government increase its effectiveness in managing all assets, including natural ones. 2/ Details of the process of inventory development. 3/ Inventory results, including  Data used  Registry results  Dashboard results Figure 2: Five asset management maturity levels correspond to each competence area. Source: FCM  Condition assessment results 4/ A summary of a risk identification self-administered by the local government, using a tool provided by MNAI. Risk management is a fourstage process that includes risk identification, analysis of probability and consequence, development of risk mitigation strategies, and control and documentation. The risk identification tool informs the first and second stages of risk management by identifying the top risks to natural assets and their associated services, and a high-level analysis of impacts and consequences. Risk types relevant to natural asset management typically include:  Service risk: the risk of an asset failure that directly affects service delivery.  Strategic risk: the risk of an event occurring that impacts the ability to achieve organizational goals.  Operations and maintenance risk: risks related to poor asset controls and oversight, which can lead to poor record-keeping and poor monitoring of asset.  Financial risk: risks related to the financial capacity of the local government to maintain municipal services.  Political risk: risks related to the nature of municipal politics. 5/ Implications of the inventory for the community including potential priorities, actions and steps towards a full natural asset management project. 5 See https://fcm.ca/sites/default/files/documents/resources/tool/assetmanagement-readiness-scale-mamp.pdf for details Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 7 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Cranbrook City of Cranbrook Mini-Report The City of Cranbrook (pop. ~20,000) is located on the west side of the Kootenay River at its confluence with the St. Mary’s River. It is the largest urban centre in the region known as the East Kootenays. Source: Wikipedia BRITISH COLUMBIA Cranbrook Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 8 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Cranbrook City of Cranbrook Mini-Report The City of Cranbrook’s asset management readiness assessment indicates it has already made progress in adopting asset management. For example, it has an asset management policy in place that guides actions for managing some engineered assets. It does not yet have an asset management strategy or roadmap to provide direction for the next 1-3 years. The Public Works department leads asset management and Cranbrook has an asset management champion. While Cranbrook did have a cross-functional asset management team in place previously, this team is not currently operational. Cranbrook has baseline asset data captured in a GIS system for sewer, water, roads, fleet, parks and buildings. Additional work is needed to fully inventory critical assets for water source and supply, sewer treatment, and parks and recreation. It has compiled some baseline data for natural assets such as groundwater aquifers, watershed and creeks. In terms of performance data, Cranbrook has information on asset condition and performance for sewer, water, roads and fleet, compiled into asset management plans. Cranbrook uses Cityworks to track its operations and maintenance data to record repair history, service failures, and loss of services for basic water distribution, sewer collection, roads, and some facilities. Baseline levels of service for assets excluding facilities have been established. Cranbrook also has performance data for the watershed and creeks, specifically flow monitoring stations, stormwater management and modelling of Joseph Creek. Cranbrook’s capital budget includes short-term replacements and upgrades and a new financial reserves policy to better relate reserves to short- and long-term asset management needs. It does not yet have financial data that puts a value on services from natural assets. In terms of the planning and decision-making competency, Cranbrook is at an early stage. Asset management planning isn’t standardized through the organization and is done mostly independently at department levels with varying approaches and levels of sophistication. That said, the Finance department does apply high-level common evaluation criteria for new projects and programs through the budget cycle. Cranbrook completed an Asset Management Investment Plan in 2012 which was a base inventory and cost estimate for all linear infrastructure, fleet, buildings, and other assets in groups. Cranbrook updated its linear infrastructure plans through the 2015 Integrated Infrastructure Capital Plans that include more detailed data based on actual Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 9 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Cranbrook records and some condition assessments. Cranbrook is currently finalizing a water master plan which will include long-term asset management planning for its water distribution system. Cranbrook also has a fleet replacement plan. There are no asset management plans for natural assets yet. Natural asset inventory Inventory overview MNAI gathered data for an area scoped to the Cranbrook municipal boundary to keep the project manageable, although Cranbrook may rely on services from natural assets beyond this boundary. The inventory has two main components: a tabular asset registry, and an online dashboard. MNAI provided the registry as Excel data, and the dashboard in a website format. Information on the condition of the assets is a subset of the inventory and is depicted in both the registry and dashboard. Inventory data MNAI used the most recently available annual crop inventory data produced by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) as baseline for land use / land cover1 and combined this with data Cranbrook provided to depict the natural assets. Table 1 describes the data sources used to develop the inventory and condition assessment. TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF DATA SOURCES - CRANBROOK Item Use Source City boundary To establish the study area boundary. Cranbrook provided. AAFC Annual Crop Inventory To establish a baseline land cover / land use. Annual Crop Inventory - Open Government Portal (canada.ca) Floodplain Used to allocate natural assets to known areas of flood risk. Cranbrook provided. Zoning Used to define what zoning has been allocated to the natural assets. Cranbrook provided. OCP Schedule B Used to define the land use and standardized OCP type associated with each natural asset. Cranbrook provided. Park (name and type) To define what assets are located within Cranbrook parks. Cranbrook provided. 1 [1] For more information on AAFC annual crop inventory, see: Annual Crop Inventory Open Government Portal (canada.ca) Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 10 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF DATA SOURCES - CRANBROOK Global Man-made Impervious Surface Dataset Informed the condition assessment. NASA https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/GlobalMan-made-Impervious-Surface-GMISDataset-Fr/dkf4-4bi3. GeoBC Atlas Integrated Transportation Network (dgtl_road_atlas.gdb) Used to esablish road density condition variable. BC Data Catalogue https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca LIDAR Data LIDAR data was processed to Cranbrook provided. determine individual tree locations, tree height and canopy cover. These variables were merged into the asset inventory as (i) tree count – number of trees within the asset, (ii) average tree height – average height of all trees located within the asset, and (iii) total canopy cover area within the asset. The inventory defined a total of 2,234 individual assets covering 1,063 hectares (ha) of the municipal area, as noted in Table 2. The majority of the natural asset area is forest cover, followed by grasslands. TABLE 2: SUMMARY OF NATURAL ASSETS BY TYPE - CRANBROOK Natural Asset Type Number of Assets Total Area (ha) Average Asset Area (ha) Forest 1,029 776 0.75 Grassland 262 126 0.48 Riparian 6 44 7.41 Shrubland 725 81 0.11 Wetland 212 36 0.17 Total 2,234 1,063 0.48 Asset registry MNAI gathered the data, sorted and analyzed it for relevance, and then delineated the type, location and extent of natural assets within the scoped project area. Each asset was then assigned a unique identification number to allow individual assets to be selected, analyzed, and the corresponding data manipulated as required. For example, changes in condition can be noted for individual assets. The information pertaining to each asset was then placed into a tabular asset registry. An excerpt from the registry showing natural asset characteristics is in Table 3. Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 11 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 3: NATURAL ASSET REGISTRY Online dashboard Inventories may provide more insights when characterised visually in a dashboard, which enables users to explore different aspects of the data. For instance, natural asset information can be quickly summarized by watershed area, or, if users want to dive into the specifics of forest assets, they can filter data to focus on that particular asset. Figure 3 and Figure 4 are screen shots from the dashboard that MNAI provided to Cranbrook. The full version can be accessed at https://go.greenanalytics.ca/cranbrook. Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 12 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca FIGURE 3: SCREENSHOT OF MAIN INVENTORY SUMMARY Figure 3: Screenshot of main inventory summary Condition of natural assets Condition assessments are a key aspect of natural asset inventories and provide an understanding of both the ecological health of natural assets and their ability to provide services. This information can be reflected in the registry and the dashboard, updated over time, and helps local governments with management decisions. Condition assessments vary in complexity. MNAI completed a desktop-based condition assessment for Cranbrook and built it into the inventory to provide an initial understanding of the status of the natural assets for the municipality. The condition assessment steps and indicators are summarized in Table 4. Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 13 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 4. CONDITION ASSESSMENT APPROACH AND INDICATORS - CRANBROOK Description & Methods for Indicator Quantification Data used to Quantify Indicator Relative asset size For each natural and semi-natural asset type, total area is calculated and a rank is assigned to the assets within each class based on its percentile score. Natural assets within the top third of the ranking (e.g., the largest assets within a class) received a high (10), those within the middle third of the ranking received a medium (5), and those within the bottom third of the ranking received a low (1). Surface permeability The permeability of surfaces is ranked on a scale of low to high depending on the type of landcover present.  Assets within impervious surfaces are assigned as low permeability.  Agriculture and shrublands are ranked as medium. Natural asset inventory Natural asset inventory, spatial representations of land uses and roads, as well as the Global Man-made impervious surfaces dataset from NASA. https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/GlobalMan-made-Impervious-Surface-GMISDataset-Fr/dkf4-4bi3  Wetlands, waterbodies and forests are ranked as high. Road density Road density was determined by first establishing a 1 km² hexagonal tessellation of the study areas. Road density was then calculated for each 1 km² hexagon. Natural assets within each hexagon were allocated the corresponding road density and given a condition rating of low (1) if density is > 2 km per km², medium (5) if it is between 1 and 2, or high (10) if it is < 1. Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 14 Natural asset inventory GeoBC Atlas Integrated Transportation Network Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 4. CONDITION ASSESSMENT APPROACH AND INDICATORS - CRANBROOK Adjacent land use A 100m buffer is applied to each Natural asset inventory plus spatial intensity natural asset to determine what land representation of land use as well as uses surround each asset. Land use intensity rankings of land uses. within the 100m buffer is allocated a land use intensity rating on a scale of 0 to 100 where 100 is considered the most intense land uses and 0 is natural land cover. Intensity ratings are as follows:  Developed = 72.5  Barren (e.g. construction or mining areas) = 60  Agriculture = 40  Natural areas = 0 Each natural asset is assigned an adjacent land use intensity score out of 100 based on an area weighted average of the surrounding land use intensities. Adjacent land use intensity scores out of 100 are converted to a scale out of 10 by dividing the weighted average score by 10 and rounding to the nearest integer. The condition score is then calculated as 10 minus the adjusted intensity score, so that larger numbers indicated better asset condition, in line with the other indicators. Once conditions were allocated to each asset, an overall score was derived for the project area. The maximum possible score for an asset was 40, based on a possible 10 points for each of 4 categories:  Road density conditions are rated low (1) if density is > 2 km per km², medium (5) if it is between 1 and 2, or high (10) if it is < 1.  Surface permeability rated as high (10), medium (5), or low (1).  Adjacent intensive land use (scale from 0 to 10 where 10 indicates the asset is surrounded by natural areas and 0 indicates the asset is surrounded by heavily developed area).  Relative asset size where the largest 3rd areas receive 10, 5 for middle 3rd, and 1 point for the lowest 3rd. Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 15 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca The total condition score was then converted into a rating scale:  Good - assets with a score of 30 or higher  Fair - assets with a score between 20 to 29  Poor - assets with a score between 10 to 19  Very Poor - assets with a score lower than 10 Figure 4 is a screenshot of the condition assessment results for Cranbrook as presented in the inventory dashboard. FIGURE 4: SNAPSHOT OF CONDITION ASSESSMENT DETAILS Figure 4: Snapshot of condition assessment details About 445 ha (or 42 per cent) of Cranbrook’s natural assets were assessed in good condition and another 445 ha (or 42 per cent) were assessed in fair condition. Riparian assets were largely rated very poor due to these assets being relatively small with high road density and in close proximity to intense land uses. Note, however, that these assets only account for a small portion of the overall natural asset area (about 4 per cent). Forest assets are generally in good or fair condition. The forest assets in poor condition are due to being relatively smaller, with higher road density and in close proximity to intense land uses. Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 16 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Within the project area, the wetland assets generally rated good or fair. Table 5 summarizes condition ratings and Figure 5 summarizes condition by natural asset type. TABLE 5. SUMMARY OF NATURAL ASSET CONDITION RATINGS - CRANBROOK Condition Rating Number of Assets Total Area (ha) Average Area (ha) Average Condition Score 1. Good 239 445 1.86 33 2. Fair 1,272 445 0.35 25 3. Poor 707 128 0.18 17 4. Very Poor 16 45 2.82 8 Total 2,234 1,063 0.48 23 FIGURE 5. SUMMARY OF CONDITION RATING BY NATURAL ASSET TYPE Figure 5. Summary of condition rating by natural asset type Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 17 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Cranbrook Risk identification Risk identification tool overview Identifying risks facing natural assets can help local governments prioritize their management of natural assets. To this end, MNAI provides local governments with a tool entitled Risk Identification Process in the Development of Natural Asset Inventories and guidance to assist them in self-administering it. The results follow. Local government responses are in Annex 1. Using the risk identification tool Using the risk tool, Cranbrook considered possible risks that the loss of natural asset functions could pose to built infrastructure, personal health and safety, and private property, including:  Overuse of trails  Dumping on land  Flooding (current and future)  Forest fires  Invasive species  Development pressure  Pollutant loading from urban, agricultural, or industrial sources (e.g., overuse of salt on roads)  Drought (current and future)  Erosion  Construction activity  Political policy change  Lack of monitoring reports MNAI then placed each risk in a risk matrix and positioned it according to the probability of an impact occurring and the relative magnitude of its negative consequences (see Figure 6). Results of the risk identification process The risk identification process revealed:  2 high-probability-high-consequence risks (forest fire and drought)  2 high-probability-medium-consequence risks (overuse of trails and flooding)  4 medium-level risks (invasive species, construction activity, pollutant loading – both industrial and urban/rural, and lack of monitoring reports)  1 low-probability-medium consequence risk (political policy change)  3 low- consequence risks (dumping, development pressure, and erosion) Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 18 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca The identified risks affect natural assets particularly in the areas of Elizabeth Lake Community Forest, 14th Avenue Forest, Shadow Mountain, Tembec Lands, Aquifer Recharge Zones, Reservoirs, Rotary Trail, Joseph Creek, Gold Creek, Baker Park, Idlewild Park, and Pop Price Park. Several of the risks are manageable, with the exception of drought which is considered intolerable, and forest fire, which is characterized as manageable to a certain degree. FIGURE 6: RESULTS OF RISK MANAGEMENT PROCESS - CRANBROOK LEGEND Figure 6: Results of risk management process Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 19 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Cranbrook Implications This section offers insights that can be gained from considering both the inventory, condition, risk, and asset management readiness assessment. Potential priorities for the local government Potential priorities for Cranbrook to focus their natural asset management efforts are:  Forest fire: Overall, 87 per cent of forest assets are in good or fair condition. However, those that are degraded (~13 per cent) and in close proximity to areas of intense land uses require heightened attention. Regional studies are predicting increasing frequency and size of wildfires. While several measures have been identified to reduce interface fire risk, the engagement of the Government of British Columbia in fire management on crown land is essential, which could be promoted through completion of the Community Wildfire Resiliency Planning process.  Drought: Cranbrook is experiencing a greater number of extreme heat days and a trend toward drier summers. Low elevation watersheds could see prolonged low flow periods, particularly in the Joseph and Gold Creeks. In addition, reduced surface flows may impact the groundwater aquifer. Increasing permeable surfaces, the completion of the Drinking Water Quality and Supply Strategy, the installation of four stream flow monitoring sites for water quality and quantity, and the upgrades to the climate monitoring network will all provide important data for further exploration of this risk to Cranbrook’s natural assets.  Overuse of trails: Elizabeth Lake Community Forest, 14th Avenue Forest, Rotary Trail, Joseph Creek, and Gold Creek areas all indicated an overuse of trails. Consequences of overuse may include damage to natural resources, diminishing air quality, water degradation, reduced wildlife, and a decline in trail experience and solitude.  Flooding: Although the risk of generalized flooding in Cranbrook is low, Joseph Creek, Baker Park, Elizabeth Lake, and Pop Price Park have a high probability of flooding. Fortunately, Cranbrook has a comprehensive approach to flood management including a recently completed flood risk assessment, and work underway to complete floodplain mapping, Creek Flow Monitoring, and creek channel upgrades. These initiatives will provide a more accurate understanding of current and future flood risks. Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 20 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 6: RISK MITIGATION STRATEGIES - CRANBROOK Accept Risk may be acceptable if probability and consequences are small Minimize Risk under local government’s control that warrants exposure reduction Share Partners in a project permit the sharing of larger risks to reduce it for each Transfer Insurance, fixed price contracts, and other risk transfer tools Opportunities to strengthen natural asset management at an organization-wide level Cranbrook has identified a number of ways it can strengthen natural asset management (as well as overall asset management practices) at an organization-wide level. These are: 1/ Re-establishing a cross-functional asset management team with a defined terms of reference and accountabilities. It will be important to include a role that is responsible for bringing forward natural asset management considerations so they are well integrated into decisionmaking. 2/ Developing a one- to three-year roadmap for its asset management system. 3/ Continuing to collect baseline data for natural assets, which should be included in the roadmap to ensure resources are allocated to this task. Cranbrook also plans to review industry standards for performance measurements and begin incorporating these into measurement and monitoring. 4/ Reviewing its asset management policy in detail with staff and management to ensure staff understand their roles. To develop staff capacity in natural asset management, a key next step could be to complete a staff competency review to identify required skillsets for natural asset management and to fill any essential gaps. Cranbrook council has directed city staff to identify level of service requirements. It will be important to build an understanding of the contribution of natural assets to service levels to ensure their management is integrated into planning and decision-making. Cranbrook also sees a potential step needed to update its forecasted infrastructure needs and current spending levels. This analysis should include any needs related to operating, maintaining and protecting natural assets. Finally, Cranbrook is interested in creating a standardized process for asset management throughout the corporation. If this step is taken, then it would be advisable to standardize its processes around natural asset management as well. Cranbrook is also interested in including natural assets in its asset management plans, either as a separate plan or integrated into other service areas. Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 21 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Cranbrook If Cranbrook wants to use the inventory as the starting place for a full natural asset management project, including implementation, then Annex 2 contains steps to consider. Possible actions for further development of the inventory Based on the inventory, Cranbrook could consider the following, regardless of whether or not it pursues a full natural asset management process. These are mostly incremental measures.  Further develop the condition assessment and risk assessment as refined data and strategies emerge from the Community Wildfire Resiliency Planning process, stream flow monitoring, upgrades to the climate monitoring network, floodplain mapping and creek channel upgrades.  Identify linkages between services and assets, and assess the condition of, and risks to, the assets from the perspective of their ability to deliver services. From a flooding and stormwater management perspective, the wetlands and forested areas in the watersheds will be key.  Share the inventory to stimulate collaboration and lessons learned with adjacent local governments.  Schedule regular updates (e.g., every 3-5 years) of the Inventory, Condition and Risk to understand trends. Toward natural asset management in City of Cranbrook, B.C. 22 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Town of Golden Town of Golden Mini-Report The Town of Golden is located in southeastern British Columbia, 262 kilometres west of Calgary, Alberta, and 713 kilometres east of Vancouver, B.C. Source: Wikipedia BRITISH COLUMBIA Golden Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 23 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Town of Golden Town of Golden Mini-Report The Town of Golden’s asset management assessment indicates that it has made progress on asset management, with a minor setback after the departure of its Chief Financial Officer (CFO), their asset management champion. The CFO had led a cross-functional team, but that team needs to be reinstated and formalized with terms of reference and accountability. Golden has an asset management policy in place. The policy does not make explicit reference to natural assets but does not exclude them either, given its emphasis on implementing best practices across all service areas. Golden’s financial reserves policy stipulates that reserves be used for core infrastructure renewal and resource asset management activities. Golden has a five-year capital planning budget that it updates annually. It has also completed asset management plans for core infrastructure but has no funding plan in place for them yet. Golden has compiled some basic natural assets data but has not yet fully incorporated them into their inventories and plans. They have recently been able to allocate reserves from the Parks and Site Improvements Operating Reserve Fund to save trees from a fir bark beetle infestation. Natural asset inventory Inventory overview MNAI gathered a range of data for an area scoped to the Golden municipal boundary. The inventory has two main components: a tabular asset registry, and an online dashboard. MNAI provided the registry as Excel data, and the dashboard in a website format. Information on the condition of the assets is a subset of the inventory and is depicted in both the registry and dashboard. Inventory data MNAI used the most recently available annual crop inventory data produced by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) as baseline for land use / land cover1 and combined this with data Golden provided to depict the natural assets. Table 1 describes the data sources used to develop the inventory and condition assessment. 1 For more information on AAFC annual crop inventory, see: Annual Crop Inventory Open Government Portal (canada.ca) Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 24 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF DATA SOURCES - GOLDEN Item Use Source ToG Boundary To establish the study area boundary. Golden provided. AAFC Annual Crop Inventory To establish a baseline land cover / land use. Annual Crop Inventory - Open Government Portal (canada.ca) 1-in-200-year flood event Used to allocate natural assets to known areas of flood risk. Golden provided. Global Man-made Impervious Surface Dataset Informed the condition assessment. NASA https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/GlobalMan-made-Impervious-Surface-GMISDataset-Fr/dkf4-4bi3 GeoBC Atlas Integrated Transportation Network (dgtl_road_atlas.gdb) Used to establish road density condition variable. BC Data Catalogue https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca LIDAR Data LIDAR data was processed to Golden provided. determine individual tree locations, tree height, and canopy cover. These variables were merged into the asset inventory as (i) tree count – number of trees within the asset, (ii) average tree height – average height of all trees located within the asset, and (iii) total canopy cover area within the asset. The inventory project defined a total of 1,080 individual assets, covering 405 hectares (ha) of the municipal area, as noted in Table 2. The majority of this was forest cover, followed by wetlands. TABLE 2: SUMMARY OF NATURAL ASSETS BY TYPE - GOLDEN Natural Asset Type Number of Assets Total Area (ha) Average Asset Area (ha) Forest 728 288 0.40 Grassland 1 0.09 0.09 Shrubland 109 12.15 0.11 Wetland 242 105 0.44 Total 1,080 405 0.38 Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 25 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Town of Golden Asset registry MNAI gathered the data, sorted and analyzed it for relevance, and then delineated the type, location and extent of natural assets within the scoped project area. Each asset was then assigned a unique identification number to allow individual assets to be selected, analyzed, and the corresponding data manipulated as required. For example, changes in condition can be noted for individual assets. The information pertaining to each asset was then placed into a tabular asset registry. An excerpt from the registry showing natural asset characteristics is in Table 3. TABLE 3: NATURAL ASSET REGISTRY Table 3: Screenshot of main inventory registry Online dashboard Inventories may provide more insights when characterised visually in a dashboard, which enables users to explore different aspects of the data. For instance, natural asset information can be quickly summarized by asset type or condition rating. Figure 3 and Figure 4 are screen shots from the dashboard that MNAI provided to Golden. The full version can be accessed at https://go.greenanalytics.ca/golden. Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 26 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca FIGURE 3: SCREENSHOT OF MAIN INVENTORY SUMMARY Figure 3: Screenshot of main inventory summary Condition of natural assets Condition assessments are key aspect of natural asset inventories and provide an understanding of both the ecological health of natural assets and their ability to provide services. This information can be reflected in the registry and the dashboard, updated over time, and helps local governments with management decisions. Condition assessments vary in complexity. MNAI completed a desktop-based condition assessment for Golden and built it into the inventory to provide an initial understanding of the status of the natural assets for the municipality. The condition assessment steps and indicators are summarized in Table 4. Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 27 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 4. CONDITION ASSESSMENT APPROACH AND INDICATORS - GOLDEN Description & Methods for Indicator Quantification Data used to Quantify Indicator Relative asset size For each natural and semi-natural asset type, total area is calculated and a rank is assigned to the assets within each class based on its percentile score. Natural assets within the top third of the ranking (e.g., the largest assets within a class) received a high (10), those within the middle third of the ranking received a medium (5), and those within the bottom third of the ranking received a low (1). Surface permeability The permeability of surfaces is ranked on a scale of low to high depending on the type of landcover present.  Assets within impervious surfaces s medium.  Wetlands, waterbodies and forests are ranked as high. Road density Road density was determined by first establishing a 1 km² hexagonal tessellation of the study areas. Road density was then calculated for each 1km² hexagon. Natural assets within each hexagon were allocated the corresponding road density and given a condition rating of low (1) if density is > 2 km per km², medium (5) if it is between 1 and 2, or high (10) if it is < 1. Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 28 Natural asset inventory Natural asset inventory, spatial representations of land uses and roads, as well as the Global Man-made impervious surfaces dataset from NASA. https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/GlobalMan-made-Impervious-Surface-GMISDataset-Fr/dkf4-4bi3 Natural asset inventory GeoBC Atlas Integrated Transportation Network Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 4. CONDITION ASSESSMENT APPROACH AND INDICATORS - GOLDEN Adjacent land use A 100m buffer is applied to each intensity natural asset to determined what land uses surround each asset. Land use within the 100m buffer is allocated a land use intensity rating on a scale of 0 to 100 where 100 is considered the most intense land uses and 0 is natural land cover. Intensity ratings are as follows: Natural asset inventory plus spatial representation of land use as well as intensity rankings of land uses.  Developed = 72.5  Barren (e.g., Construction or mining areas) = 60  Agriculture = 40  Natural areas = 0 Each natural asset is assigned an adjacent land use intensity score out of 100 based on an area weighted average of the surrounding land use intensities. Adjacent land use intensity scores out of 100 are converted to a scale out of 10 by dividing the weighted average score by 10 and rounding to the nearest integer. The condition score is then calculated as 10 minus the adjusted intensity score, so that larger numbers indicated better asset condition, in line with the other indicators. Once conditions were allocated to each asset, an overall score was derived for the project area. The maximum possible score for an asset was 40, based on a possible 10 points for each of 4 categories:  Road density conditions are rated low (1) if density is > 2 km per km², medium (5) if it is between 1 and 2, or high (10) if it is < 1.  Surface permeability rated as high (10), medium (5), or low (1).  Adjacent intensive land use (scale from 0 to 10 where 10 indicates the asset is surrounded by natural areas and 0 indicates the asset is surrounded by heavily developed area).  Relative asset size where the largest 3rd areas receive 10, 5 for middle 3rd, and 1 point for the lowest 3rd. Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 29 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Town of Golden The total condition score was then converted into a rating scale:  Good - assets with a score of 30 or higher  Fair - assets with a score between 20 to 29  Poor - assets with a score between 10 to 19  Very Poor - assets with a score lower than 10 Figure 4 is a snapshot of the condition assessment results as presented in the inventory dashboard for Golden. FIGURE 4: SNAPSHOT OF CONDITION ASSESSMENT DETAILS Figure 4: Snapshot of condition assessment details Overall, about 47 ha (or 12 per cent) of natural assets were assessed in good condition and 247 ha (or 61 per cent) were assessed in fair condition. The forest assets are generally in fair condition. The forest assets in poor condition are due to being relatively small, with high road density and in close proximity to intense land uses. Within the project area, the majority of the wetlands rated good or fair. Those that ranked poor are due to being relatively small, with high road density and in close proximity to intense land uses. Table 5 summarizes the condition ratings and Figure 5 summarizes condition by natural asset type. Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 30 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 5. SUMMARY OF NATURAL ASSET CONDITION RATINGS - GOLDEN Condition Rating Number of Assets Total Area (ha) Average Total Score 1. Good 36 47 1.31 2. Fair 402 247 0.61 3. Poor 641 111 0.17 4. Very Poor 1 0.01 0.01 1,080 405 0.38 Total FIGURE 5. SUMMARY OF CONDITION RATING BY NATURAL ASSET TYPE Figure 5: Summary of condition rating by natural asset type Risk identification Risk identification tool overview Identifying risks facing natural assets can help local governments prioritize their management of natural assets. To this end, MNAI provides local governments with a tool entitled Risk Identification Process in the Development of Natural Asset Inventories and guidance to assist them in self-administering it. The results follow. Local government responses are in Annex 1. Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 31 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Town of Golden Using the risk identification tool Using the risk tool, Golden considered possible risks that the loss of natural asset functions could pose to built infrastructure, personal health and safety, and private property, including:  Overuse of trails  Illegal dumping  Flooding (current and future)  Forest fires  Invasive species  Development pressure  Pollutant loading from urban, agricultural, or industrial sources (e.g. overuse of salt on roads)  Drought (current and future)  Erosion  Ice jams  Construction activity  Political policy change MNAI then placed each risk in a risk matrix according to the probability of an impact occurring and the relative magnitude of its negative consequences (see Figure 6). Results of the risk identification process The risk identification process revealed:  1 high-level risk (forest fire)  2 medium-level risks (flooding and pollutant loading)  1 low-high level risk (invasive species)  8 low-level risks (overuse of trails, illegal dumping, development pressure, drought, erosion, ice jams, construction activity, and political policy change) The identified risks affect natural assets across much of Golden. Priority areas include Kicking Horse River, Hospital Creek, the South and North benches, the northern and eastern municipal boundaries, and municipal wetlands. Private properties throughout Golden also contain various risks to natural assets, especially those related to pollutant loading and policy changes related to water bottling developments, which could impact the aquifer. Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 32 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Town of Golden FIGURE 6: RESULTS OF RISK MANAGEMENT PROCESS - GOLDEN LEGEND Figure 6: Results of risk management process Implications This section offers insights that can be gained from considering the inventory, condition, risk, and asset management readiness assessment. Potential priorities for the local government Potential priorities for Golden to focus their natural asset management efforts are as follows:  Forest fire: Overall, forest assets are in good (71 per cent) or fair (44 per cent) condition. Regional studies are predicting an increase in the frequency and size of wildfires. Forests along the northern and eastern lengths of the municipal boundary are areas of current concern. Given the location of these areas, effective management of wildfires will require coordination with neighbouring regions and/or engagement Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 33 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Town of Golden of the Government of British Columbia in fire management on crown land, which could be promoted through completion of the Community Wildfire Resiliency Planning process.  Flooding: Flooding was ranked as a medium risk, with noted risks to diking along the Kicking Horse River and Hospital Creek. In addition, wetlands in various locations throughout Golden could be a flood risk, with road density having the most significant impact on wetland condition.  Invasive species: Invasive species have been identified as a lowprobability-high-consequence risk to natural assets and their associated services. Golden has experienced Fir Bark infestation in southeast forests and have mapped invasive species in the Invasive Alien Plant Program (IAPP) Database. Furthermore, the Community Invasive Plant Program (CIPP), which works in partnership with Golden and the Columbia-Shuswap Invasive Species Society (CSISS), have identified high-priority areas, removed invasive plants, conducted public outreach and identified program areas for improvement2.  Pollutant Loading: Industrial pollutant loading to Golden’s aquifer is ranked as a medium-level risk. Contaminated sites have been mapped, and a monitoring program for landfill performance related to groundwater quality at the landfill boundary, residential well water and surface water quality, and landfill leachate has been completed3. Exceedances of drinking water standards were noted for groundwater beneath a portion of Golden’s neighbourhoods, as were the potential of surface water flow onto, through, and off the landfill site during spring freshet and high precipitation periods. TABLE 6: RISK MITIGATION STRATEGIES - GOLDEN Accept Risk may be acceptable if probability and consequences are small Minimize Risk under local government’s control that warrants exposure reduction Share Partners in a project permit the sharing of larger risks to reduce it for each Transfer Insurance, fixed price contracts, and other risk transfer tools Opportunities to strengthen natural asset management at an organization-wide level Golden has identified next steps to help it progress in asset management while integrating natural assets. A cross-functional asset management team or committee needs to be reinstated and it would be advisable to ensure that someone responsible for bringing in natural asset management considerations is included on that team. In order to develop staff capacity in natural asset management, a key next step could be to complete a staff competency review to identify required skillsets for natural asset management and to fill any essential 2gaps. Hackett 2019. 3 Golder Associates Ltd., 2019. Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 34 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Golden has not yet engaged Council on service levels for engineered assets. This would be an important step to support resourcing of asset management activities. Golden will need to develop a full inventory of natural assets and build an understanding of the levels of service they are providing, as well as their value, in order to include natural assets in their service level discussions and in future asset management plans. Finally, it will be important to identify priority natural assets and the resources required to incorporate natural asset management into Golden’s asset management system and requirements to make progress on the asset management readiness scale. If the local government wants to use the inventory as the starting place for a full natural asset management project, including implementation, then Annex 2 contains steps to consider. Possible actions for further development of the inventory Based on the inventory, Golden could consider the following, regardless of whether or not it pursues a full natural asset management process. These are mostly incremental measures.  Determine acceptable levels of risk to inform Golden’s risk mitigation strategies.  Further develop the condition assessment and risk assessment for forest fire, potentially through the completion of the Community Wildfire Resiliency Planning process.  Share the inventory to stimulate collaboration and lessons learned with adjacent local governments.  Schedule regular updates (e.g., every 3-5 years) of the Inventory, Condition and Risk to understand trends. Toward natural asset management in Town of Golden, B.C. 35 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK) Mini-Report The RDCK is a regional district in the province of British Columbia with a population of ~59,000 and an area of 22,130.72 square kilometres. Source: Wikipedia BRITISH COLUMBIA Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK) Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 36 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of Central Kootenay Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK) Mini-Report The RDCK completed an asset management readiness assessment that shows that while it is at an early stage of asset management, the Board of Directors and senior management understand the importance of asset management and has committed to formalizing asset management. The RDCK has identified asset management champions to spearhead this work and has identified a crossfunctional team that could include someone responsible for incorporating natural asset management considerations. The RDCK does not yet have an asset management policy or roadmap to guide actions but does have basic asset data and information about critical assets for most service areas. It has developed asset investment plans that address short and longer-term needs for engineered assets. Natural asset considerations have not yet been incorporated into asset investment plans. Natural asset inventory Inventory overview The inventory was scoped to the Arrow Creek boundary at the request of the RDCK. The inventory has two main components: a tabular asset registry, and an online dashboard. MNAI provided the registry as Excel data, and the dashboard in a website format. Information on the condition of the assets is a subset of the inventory and is depicted in both the registry and dashboard. Inventory data MNAI used the most recently available annual crop inventory data produced by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) as baseline for land use / land cover1 and combined this with data the RDCK provided to depict the natural assets. Table 1 describes the data sources used to develop the inventory and condition assessment. 1 For more information on AAFC annual crop inventory, see: Annual Crop Inventory Open Government Portal (canada.ca) Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 37 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF DATA SOURCES - THE RDCK Item Use Source Official Community Plan To establish the study area boundary. RDCK provided. AAFC Annual Crop Inventory To establish a baseline land cover / land use. Annual Crop Inventory - Open Government Portal (canada.ca) Zoning Used to define what zoning has been allocated to the natural assets. RDCK provided RDCK Parks Used to define natural assets that are within Kianuko Park. RDCK provided Global Man-made Impervious Surface Dataset Informed the condition assessment. NASA https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/GlobalMan-made-Impervious-Surface-GMISDataset-Fr/dkf4-4bi3 GeoBC Atlas Integrated Transportation Network (dgtl_road_atlas.gdb) Used to establish road density condition variable. BC Data Catalogue https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca The inventory project defined a total of 55,475 individual assets covering 224,304 hectares (ha) of the district area, as noted in Table 2. The majority of this area is forest cover, followed by water. TABLE 2: SUMMARY OF NATURAL ASSETS BY TYPE - THE RDCK Natural Asset Type Number of Assets Total Area (ha) Average Asset Area (ha) Agriculture 2,297 7,010 3.05 Forest 12,738 178,576 14.02 Grassland 4,302 2,186 0.51 Shrubland 34,234 14,687 0.43 Water 276 21,601 78.27 Wetland 1,628 245 0.15 Total 55,475 224,305 4.04 Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 38 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Asset registry MNAI gathered the data, sorted and analyzed it for relevance, and then delineated the type, location and extent of natural assets within the scoped project area. Each asset was then assigned a unique identification number to allow individual assets to be selected, analyzed, and the corresponding data manipulated as required. For example, changes in condition can be noted for individual assets. The information pertaining to each asset was then placed into a tabular asset registry. An excerpt from the registry showing natural asset characteristics is in Table 3. TABLE 3: SCREENSHOT OF MAIN INVENTORY REGISTRY Table 3: Screenshot of main inventory registry Online dashboard Inventories may provide more insights when characterised visually in a dashboard, which enables users to explore different aspects of the data. For instance, natural asset information can be quickly summarized by watershed area, or, if users want to dive into the specifics of forest assets, they can quickly filter the data to focus on that particular asset. Figure 3 and Figure 4 are screen shots from the dashboard that MNAI provided to the RDCK. The full version can be accessed at https://go.greenanalytics.ca/RDCK-ArrowCreek for Arrow Creek or at https://go.greenanalytics.ca/RDCK for the entire RDCK area. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 39 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of Central Kootenay FIGURE 3: SCREENSHOT OF MAIN INVENTORY SUMMARY Figure 3: Screenshot of main inventory summary Condition of natural assets Condition assessments are a key aspect of natural asset inventories as they provide an understanding of both the ecological health of natural assets and their ability to provide services. This information can be reflected in the registry and the dashboard, updated over time, and helps local governments with management decisions. Condition assessments can vary in complexity. MNAI completed a desktopbased condition assessment for the RDCK Arrow Creek Watershed and built it into the inventory to provide an initial understanding of the status of the natural assets for the municipality. The condition assessment steps and indicators are summarized in Table 4. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 40 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 4. CONDITION ASSESSMENT APPROACH AND INDICATORS - RDCK Description & Methods for Indicator Quantification Data used to Quantify Indicator Relative asset size For each natural and semi-natural asset type, total area is calculated and a rank is assigned to the assets within each class based on its percentile score. Natural assets within the top third of the ranking (e.g., the largest assets within a class) received a high (10), those within the middle third of the ranking received a medium (5), and those within the bottom third of the ranking received a low (1). Surface permeability The permeability of surfaces is ranked on a scale of low to high depending on the type of landcover present.  Assets within impervious surfaces are assigned as low permeability. Natural asset inventory Natural asset inventory, spatial representations of land uses and roads, as well as the Global Man-made Impervious Surface Dataset from NASA. https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/GlobalMan-made-Impervious-Surface-GMISDataset-Fr/dkf4-4bi3  Agriculture and shrublands are ranked as medium.  Wetlands, waterbodies and forests are ranked as high. Road density Road density was determined by first establishing a 1 km² hexagonal tessellation of the study areas. Road density was then calculated for each 1km² hexagon. Natural assets within each hexagon were allocated the corresponding road density and given a condition rating of low (1) if density is > 2 km per km², medium (5) if it is between 1 and 2, or high (10) if it is < 1. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 41 Natural asset inventory GeoBC Atlas Integrated Transportation Network Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 4. CONDITION ASSESSMENT APPROACH AND INDICATORS - RDCK Adjacent land use A 100m buffer is applied to each intensity natural asset to determined what land uses surround each asset. Land use within the 100m buffer is allocated a land use intensity rating on a scale of 0 to 100 where 100 is considered the most intense land uses and 0 is natural land cover. Intensity ratings are as follows: Natural asset inventory plus spatial representation of land use as well as intensity rankings of land uses.  Developed = 72.5  Barren (e.g. Construction, or mining areas) = 60  Agriculture = 40  Natural areas = 0 Each natural asset is assigned an adjacent land use intensity score out of 100 based on an area weighted average of the surrounding land use intensities. Adjacent land use intensity scores out of 100 are converted to a scale out of 10 by dividing the weighted average score by 10 and rounding to the nearest integer. The condition score is then calculated as 10 minus the adjusted intensity score, so that larger numbers indicated better asset condition, in line with the other indicators. Table 4. Condition assessment approach and indicators - RDCK Once conditions were allocated to each asset, an overall score was derived for the project area. The maximum possible score for an asset was 40, based on a possible 10 points for each of 4 categories:  Road density conditions are rated low (1) if density is > 2 km per km², medium (5) if it is between 1 and 2, or high (10) if it is < 1.  Surface permeability rated as high (10), medium (5), or low (1).  Adjacent intensive land use (scale from 0 to 10 where 10 indicates the asset is surrounded by natural areas and 0 indicates the asset is surrounded by heavily developed area).  Relative asset size where the largest 3rd areas receive 10, 5 for middle 3rd, and 1 point for the lowest 3rd. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 42 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca The total condition score was then converted into a rating scale:  Good - assets with a score of 30 or higher  Fair - assets with a score between 20 to 29  Poor - assets with a score between 10 to 19  Very Poor - assets with a score lower than 10 Figure 4 is a screenshot of the condition assessment for the Arrow Creek boundary as presented in the RDCK’s inventory dashboard. FIGURE 4: SNAPSHOT OF CONDITION ASSESSMENT DETAILS Figure 4: Snapshot of condition assessment details Within the Arrow Creek boundary, about 175,528 ha (or approximately 90 per cent) of natural assets were assessed in good condition and 13,809 ha (or 7 per cent) were assessed in fair condition. Shrubland assets were largely rated poor or very poor. This is due to a combination of these assets being relatively small with high road density. Note, however, that these assets only account for a small portion of the overall natural asset area (about 7 per cent). The forest assets are generally in good condition. The forest assets in poor condition are due to being relatively small, with dense roads and adjacent to relatively more intensive land uses. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 43 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Table 5 summarizes condition ratings and Figure 5 summarizes condition by natural asset type. TABLE 5. SUMMARY OF NATURAL ASSET CONDITION RATINGS - RDCK Condition Rating Number of Assets Total Area (ha) Average Area (ha) Average Condition Score 1. Good 6,881 175,529 25.51 31 2. Fair 30,153 13,809 0.46 25 3. Poor 15,857 6,355 0.40 17 11 1.21 0.11 10 52,902 195,693 3.70 23 4. Very Poor Total Table 5. Summary of natural asset condition ratings - RDCK FIGURE 5. SUMMARY OF CONDITION RATING BY NATURAL ASSET TYPE Figure 5: Summary of condition rating by natural asset type Risk identification Risk identification tool overview Identifying risks facing natural assets can help local governments prioritize their management of natural assets. To this end, MNAI provides local governments with a tool entitled Risk Identification Process in the Development of Natural Asset Inventories and guidance to assist them in self-administering it. The results follow. Local government responses are in Annex 1. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 44 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of Central Kootenay Risk types relevant to natural asset management typically include:  Service risk: the risk of an asset failure that directly affects service delivery.  Strategic risk: the risk of an event occurring that impacts the ability to achieve organizational goals.  Operations and maintenance risk: risks related to poor asset controls and oversight, which can lead to poor record-keeping and poor monitoring of asset.  Financial risk: risks related to the financial capacity of the local government to maintain municipal services.  Political risk: risks related to the nature of municipal politics. Using the risk identification tool Using the risk tool, RDCK staff considered possible risks that the loss of natural asset functions could pose to built infrastructure, personal health and safety, and private property, including:  Low flows  Competing demands  Increasing agricultural use  Increasing commercial use  Increasing residential connections  Clearwater flooding  Road construction and maintenance  Recreational impact – overuse  Introduction of invasive species  Wildfire MNAI then placed each risk in a risk matrix and positioned it according to the probability of an impact occurring and the relative magnitude of its negative consequences (see Figure 6). Results of the risk identification process The risk identification process revealed:  5 high-level risks (low flows, competing demands, increasing agriculture use, clearwater flooding, and wildfire)  2 medium-level risks (increasing commercial use, recreational impact overuse)  3 low-level risks (increasing residential connections, road construction and maintenance, and introduction of invasive species) In terms of scope, the RDCK identified risks that affect natural assets across the entire area of the Arrow Creek watershed. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 45 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca FIGURE 6: RESULTS OF RISK MANAGEMENT PROCESS - RDCK LEGEND Figure 6: Results of risk management process - RDCK Implications This section offers insights that can be gained from considering the inventory, condition, risk and asset management readiness assessment. Potential priorities for the local government Potential priorities for the RDCK to focus their natural asset management efforts are as follows:  Low flows: Seasonal low flows are experienced throughout the watershed, with water conservation measures applied every year from June 1 to September 30. The RDCK has recently adopted a Drinking Water Conservation Plan, which includes Demand Forecasts, Water Reduction Targets, Drought Management and Water Shortage Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 46 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of Central Kootenay Contingency Planning, as well as a Watershed Management Plan Strategy. Both will provide important data for further exploration of this risk to RDCK’s natural assets.  Competing demands: Competing water demand is of concern throughout the Arrow Creek watershed, where low flows can increase water temperatures leading to impacts to fish and other aquatic species. The RDCK is working with the Erickson Water Commission and the Town of Creston to review potential future demands in the service area prior to making a decision to expand the Arrow Creek service area.  Increasing agriculture use: the RDCK has high water demand from agriculture, particularly in Erickson. A Water Conservation Pilot was completed in 2007, an Agricultural Water Demand Model was completed in 2017, and more recently, an update on the Erickson agricultural inventory has been commissioned. While this will provide additional information for addressing water quantity concerns, local initiatives such as Farmland Advantage (https://www.farmlandadvantage.com/) can assist with broader ecosystem impacts by compensating farmers to engage in best management practices.  Clearwater flooding: Riverine flooding is experienced throughout the watershed, most commonly in the spring, which can impact Erickson communities and engineered infrastructure. The RDCK is undertaking a Flood Mapping Study, which will build on a Flood and Steep Creek Geohazard Risk Prioritization Study (2017). This will provide the RDCK with foundational data to inform community planning, risk reduction strategies, and emergency funding.  Wildfire: Wildfire is of concern throughout the watershed, which has led to collaboration efforts to mitigate risk, such as the Nelson & Area Wildfire Risk Reduction partnership, which shares information and resources and collaborates on projects. The aforementioned Flood Mapping Study will provide wildfire-related impacts related to changes in creek and river hydrology. Lastly, the RDCK has also noted the efforts of Community Forest management, the RDCK wildfire mitigation program and the efforts of the Creston Community Forest to reduce wildfire impact. If the RDCK wants to use the inventory as the starting place for a full natural asset management project, including implementation, then Annex 2 contains steps to consider. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 47 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of Central Kootenay Possible actions for further development of the inventory Based on the inventory, the RDCK could consider the following, regardless of whether or not it pursues a full natural asset management process. These are mostly incremental measures.  Determine acceptable levels of risk to inform the RDCK’s risk mitigation strategies.  Further develop the condition assessment and risk assessment by integrating findings from studies and plans being implemented, such as the Drinking Water Conservation Plan, the Watershed Management Plan and the Flood Mapping Study.  Share the inventory to stimulate collaboration and lessons learned with adjacent local governments.  Schedule regular updates (e.g. every 3-5 years) of the Inventory, Condition and Risk to understand trends. Opportunities to strengthen natural asset management at an organization-wide level The RDCK is at a relatively early stage of formalizing asset management and applying it consistently across the organization. The RDCK has identified asset management champions who are leading the strengthening of asset management, as well as a cross-functional team that could include someone who will be responsible for incorporating natural asset considerations. Some immediate opportunities to strengthen policy and governance could be to develop an asset management policy that incorporates natural asset considerations, and to develop an asset management roadmap that will define key action areas to strengthen over the next 1-2 years. In addition, the crossfunctional asset management team would benefit from having clearly defined roles and responsibilities and a terms of reference that defines what the group is responsible for. Natural assets have not yet been incorporated into the RDCK’s asset investment plans though these plans do exist for most service areas. The RDCK could consider documenting an approach to managing or protecting the natural assets that support service delivery, which shows how they will be incorporated into asset investment plans. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Central Kootenay, B.C. 48 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) Mini-Report RDEK is a regional district in southeastern B.C. with a population of ~ 60,000 and an area of 27,542.69 square kilometres. The City of Cranbrook, another project participant, is located in this region. Source: Wikipedia BRITISH COLUMBIA Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 49 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of East Kootenay Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) Mini-Report The Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) is at the beginning of its asset management journey and designated asset management as an organizational priority in 2021. RDEK has begun to compile a basic list of traditional assets and has done this natural asset inventory pilot for Windermere Creek. There are many opportunities to incorporate natural asset management considerations into its progress on asset management in the coming years, some of which are outlined below. Natural asset inventory Inventory overview The inventory for RDEK was scoped to the Windermere boundary. The inventory has two main components: a tabular asset registry, and an online dashboard. MNAI provided the registry as Excel data, and the dashboard in a website format. Information on the condition of the assets is a subset of the inventory and is depicted in both the registry and dashboard. Inventory data MNAI used the most recently available annual crop inventory data produced by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) as baseline for land use / land cover1 and combined this with data RDEK provided to depict the natural assets. Table 1 describes the data sources used to develop the inventory and condition assessment. TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF DATA SOURCES - RDEK Item Use Source FairmontCreekAOI2 To establish the study area boundary RDEK provided. AAFC Annual Crop Inventory To establish a baseline land cover / land use Annual Crop Inventory - Open Government Portal (canada.ca) 1 For more information on AAFC annual crop inventory, see: Annual Crop Inventory Open Government Portal (canada.ca) Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 50 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF DATA SOURCES - RDEK Global Man-made Impervious Surface Dataset Informed the condition assessment NASA https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/GlobalMan-made-Impervious-Surface-GMISDataset-Fr/dkf4-4bi3 GeoBC Atlas Integrated Transportation Network (dgtl_road_atlas.gdb) Used to establish road density condition variable BC Data Catalogue https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca The inventory project defined a total of 4,227 individual assets covering 8,094 hectares (ha) of the municipal area, as noted in Table 2. The majority of this area is forest cover. TABLE 2: SUMMARY OF NATURAL ASSETS BY TYPE - RDEK Natural Asset Type Number of Assets Total Area (ha) Average Asset Area (ha) Agricaulture 52 65 1.26 Forest 1,217 7,604 6.25 Grassland 1,143 194 0.17 Shrubland 1,656 212 0.13 Water 4 0.80 0.2 Wetland 155 18 0.12 Total 4,227 8,094 1.91 Asset registry MNAI gathered the data, sorted and analyzed it for relevance, and then delineated the type, location and extent of natural assets within the scoped project area. Each asset was then assigned a unique identification number to allow individual assets to be selected, analyzed, and the corresponding data manipulated as required. For example, changes in condition can be noted for individual assets. The information pertaining to each asset was then placed into a tabular asset registry. An excerpt from the registry showing natural asset characteristics is in Table 3. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 51 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 3: EXCERPT FROM THE REGISTRY Table 3: Excerpt from the registry Online dashboard Inventories may provide more insights when characterised visually in a dashboard, which enables users to explore different aspects of the data. For instance, natural asset information can be quickly summarized by asset type or condition rating. Figure 3 and Figure 4 are screen shots from the dashboard that MNAI provided to RDEK. The full version can be accessed at https:// go.greenanalytics.ca/RDEK-Windermere. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 52 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of East Kootenay FIGURE 3: SCREENSHOT OF MAIN INVENTORY SUMMARY Figure 3: Screenshot of main inventory summary Condition of natural assets Condition assessments are key aspect of natural asset inventories as they provide an understanding of both the ecological health of natural assets and their ability to provide services. This information can be reflected in the registry and the dashboard, updated over time, and helps local governments with management decisions. Condition assessments vary in complexity. MNAI completed a desktop-based condition assessment for the Windermere area of RDEK and built it into the inventory to provide an initial understanding of the status of the natural assets for the municipality. The condition assessment steps and indicators are summarized in Table 4. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 53 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 4. CONDITION ASSESSMENT APPROACH AND INDICATORS - RDEK Description & Methods for Indicator Quantification Data used to Quantify Indicator Relative asset size For each natural and semi-natural asset type, total area is calculated and a rank is assigned to the assets within each class based on its percentile score. Natural assets within the top third of the ranking (e.g., the largest assets within a class) received a high (10), those within the middle third of the ranking received a medium (5), and those within the bottom third of the ranking received a low (1). Surface permeability The permeability of surfaces is ranked on a scale of low to high depending on the type of landcover present.  Assets within impervious surfaces are assigned as low permeability.  Agriculture and shrublands are ranked as medium. Natural asset inventory Natural asset inventory, spatial representations of land uses and roads, as well as the Global Man-made impervious surfaces dataset from NASA. https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/GlobalMan-made-Impervious-Surface-GMISDataset-Fr/dkf4-4bi3  Wetlands, waterbodies and forests are ranked as high. Road density Road density was determined by first establishing a 1 km² hexagonal tessellation of the study areas. Road density was then calculated for each 1km² hexagon. Natural assets within each hexagon were allocated the corresponding road density and given a condition rating of low (1) if density is > 2 km per km², medium (5) if it is between 1 and 2, or high (10) if it is < 1. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 54 Natural asset inventory GeoBC Atlas Integrated Transportation Network Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of East Kootenay TABLE 4. CONDITION ASSESSMENT APPROACH AND INDICATORS - RDEK Adjacent land use A 100m buffer is applied to each intensity natural asset to determined what land uses surround each asset. Land use within the 100m buffer is allocated a land use intensity rating on a scale of 0 to 100 where 100 is considered the most intense land uses and 0 is natural land cover. Intensity ratings are as follows: Natural asset inventory plus spatial representation of land use as well as intensity rankings of land uses.  Developed = 72.5  Barren (e.g., construction or mining areas) = 60  Agriculture = 40  Natural areas = 0 Each natural asset is assigned an adjacent land use intensity score out of 100 based on an area weighted average of the surrounding land use intensities. Adjacent land use intensity scores out of 100 are converted to a scale out of 10 by dividing the weighted average score by 10 and rounding to the nearest integer. The condition score is then calculated as 10 minus the adjusted intensity score, so that larger numbers indicated better asset condition, in line with the other indicators. Once conditions were allocated to each asset, an overall score was derived for the project area. The maximum possible score for an asset was 40, based on a possible 10 points for each of 4 categories:  Road density conditions are rated low (1) if density is > 2 km per km², medium (5) if it is between 1 and 2, or high (10) if it is < 1.  Surface permeability rated as high (10), medium (5), or low (1).  Adjacent intensive land use (scale from 0 to 10 where 10 indicates the asset is surrounded by natural areas and 0 indicates the asset is surrounded by heavily developed area).  Relative asset size where the largest 3rd areas receive 10, 5 for middle 3rd, and 1 point for the lowest 3rd. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 55 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca The total condition score was then converted into a rating scale:  Good - assets with a score of 30 or higher  Fair - assets with a score between 20 to 29  Poor - assets with a score between 10 to 19  Very Poor - assets with a score lower than 10 Figure 4 is a snapshot of the condition assessment results as presented in the inventory dashboard for Golden. FIGURE 4: SNAPSHOT OF CONDITION ASSESSMENT DETAILS Figure 4: Snapshot of condition assessment details Overall, about 7,365 ha (or 92 per cent) of natural assets were assessed in good condition and 512 ha (or 6 per cent) were assessed in fair condition. Grassland, shrubland and wetland assets rated as fair and poor condition and all of the forest assets rated as good condition. Table 5 summarizes condition ratings and Figure 5 summarizes condition by natural asset type. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 56 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 5. SUMMARY OF NATURAL ASSET CONDITION RATINGS - RDEK Condition Rating Number of Assets Total Area (ha) Average Area (ha) Average Condition Score 1. Good 612 7,365 12.03 31 2. Fair 2,733 512 0.19 25 3. Poor 826 151 0.18 17 Total 4,171 8,028 1.92 24 FIGURE 5. SUMMARY OF CONDITION RATING BY NATURAL ASSET TYPE Figure 5: Summary of condition rating by natural asset type Risk identification Risk identification tool overview Identifying risks facing natural assets can help local governments prioritize their management of natural assets. To this end, MNAI provides local governments with a tool entitled Risk Identification Process in the Development of Natural Asset Inventories and guidance to assist them in self-administering it. The results follow. Local government responses are in Annex 1. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 57 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of East Kootenay Using the risk identification tool Using the risk tool, RDEK considered possible risks that the loss of natural asset functions could pose to built infrastructure, personal health and safety, and private property, including:  Overuse of trails  Flooding (current and future)  Forest fire  Invasive species  Development pressure  Pollutant loading from urban, agricultural, or industrial sources  Drought (current and future)  Erosion  Ice jams  Lack of funding for proactive mitigation  Absence of recent flood mapping Each risk was then ranked low, medium or high according to the probability of an impact occurring, and the relative magnitude of its negative consequences. Results of the risk identification process The risk identification process revealed:  3 high-level risks (flooding, ice jams, and forest fires)  1 medium-high level risk (erosion/debris flow)  3 medium-level risks (invasive species, lack of funding for proactive mitigation and absence of recent flood mapping)  3 low-medium level risks (development pressure, pollutant loading, and drought)  1 low-level risk (overuse of trails) The identified risks to natural assets impact built infrastructure, including the water treatment plant, highway, culverts, water intakes, and residences, including the RV park. They can also affect community health and safety via septic system impacts, recreational opportunities, and flooding. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 58 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of East Kootenay FIGURE 6: RESULTS OF RISK MANAGEMENT PROCESS - GOLDEN LEGEND Figure 6: Snapshot of condition assessment details Implications This section offers insights that can be gained from considering the inventory, condition, risk and asset management readiness assessment. Potential priorities for the local government Potential priorities for RDEK to focus their natural asset management efforts are as follows:  Flooding: Flooding is ranked as a high-level risk, with potential impacts to the water treatment plant, highway, residences, RV park, and agricultural areas. Restricted recreational opportunities on the lake and health impacts related to degraded water quality resulting from flooded septic systems were also cited as concerns. A full flood risk assessment is recommended that considers risk and risk dynamics, including Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 59 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of East Kootenay changes related to natural system variability, climate change, policy, governance, human activities and economic analysis.  Ice jams: Ice jams is ranked as a high-level risk. Ice-jamming during spring break-up is a major driver of flood events, and often results in the most damaging and severe flood hazards. As such, the occurrence and impacts of ice jams should be incorporated into a full flooding risk assessment.  Forest fire: Overall, the majority of forest assets are in good (97 per cent) condition. However, those that are degraded and in close proximity to areas of intense land uses require heightened attention. Impacts to the water treatment plant, residential areas, agricultural land, and riparian vegetation are of particular concern. RDEK has completed a community wildfire protection plan for Electoral Area F and encourages crown land management that minimizes interface fire risk and wildfire.  Erosion/debris flow: Erosion and debris flow is ranked as a mediumhigh level risk related to flooding. The areas of Windermere Creek and Lake Windermere, as well as the culvert running under the highway, are noted as vulnerable to erosion and debris flow impacts. TABLE 6: RISK MITIGATION STRATEGIES - RDEK Accept Risk may be acceptable if probability and consequences are small Minimize Risk under local government’s control that warrants exposure reduction Share Partners in a project permit the sharing of larger risks to reduce it for each Transfer Insurance, fixed price contracts, and other risk transfer tools Opportunities to strengthen natural asset management at an organization-wide level RDEK is at an early stage of asset management. This presents numerous opportunities to integrate natural asset considerations, including the following, which are consistent with accepted asset management competency areas:  An asset management policy that defines principles and accountabilities around which it will plan and manage its infrastructure. The policy could make reference to the importance of including natural assets as a component of core service delivery.  A roadmap and strategy that outlines asset management priorities for the next one to three years; natural asset management priorities could be integrated to ensure they are resourced appropriately in annual budgeting.  Establishing a cross-functional asset management team with formal terms of reference and accountabilities, including responsibilities for integrating natural asset management. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 60 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of East Kootenay  Proactive planning and management of natural assets to ensure they are properly protected, maintained or restored to deliver core ecosystem services. In order to develop staff capacity in natural asset management, a key next step could be to complete a staff competency review to identify required skillsets for natural asset management and to fill any essential gaps. If RDEK wants to use the inventory as the starting place for a full natural asset management project, including implementation, then Annex 2 contains steps to consider. Possible actions for further development of the inventory Based on the inventory, RDEK could consider the following, regardless of whether or not it pursues a full natural asset management process. These are mostly incremental measures.  Determine acceptable levels of risk to inform RDEK’s risk mitigation strategies.  Identify linkages between services and assets, and assess the condition of, and risks to, the assets from the perspective of their ability to deliver services.  Share the inventory to stimulate collaboration and lessons learned with adjacent local governments.  Schedule regular updates (e.g., every 3-5 years) of the Inventory, Condition and Risk to understand trends. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of East Kootenay, B.C. 61 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) Mini-Report RDKB is a regional district in British Columbia with a population of ~ 31,000 and an area of 8,095.62 km2. Source: Wikipedia BRITISH COLUMBIA Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB), B.C. 62 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) Mini-Report At the time of writing this report, RDKB had not completed a readiness assessment. Completing the assessment would enable RDKB to better understand steps it can take to ensure they integrate natural assets into asset management policies, strategies and plans. Natural asset inventory Inventory overview The inventory was scoped to the RDKB district boundary. The inventory has two main components: a tabular asset registry, and an online dashboard. MNAI provided the registry as Excel data, and the dashboard in a website format. Information on the condition of the assets is a subset of the inventory and is depicted in both the registry and dashboard. Inventory data MNAI used the most recently available annual crop inventory data produced by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) as baseline for land use / land cover.1 Table 1 describes the data sources used to develop the inventory and condition assessment. TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF DATA SOURCES - RDKB Item Use Source Regional District Boundary To establish the study area boundary. BC Data Catalogue https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/ dataset/regional-district-boundariesroad-centreline-aligned Freshwater Atlas Watershed Used to organize and aggregate natural asset information. The watershed units were treated as the primary asset. BC Data Catalogue https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/ dataset/freshwater-atlas-watersheds 1 For more information on AAFC annual crop inventory, see: Annual Crop Inventory Open Government Portal (canada.ca) Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB), B.C. 63 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF DATA SOURCES - RDKB AAFC Annual Crop Inventory To establish a baseline land cover / land use. Annual Crop Inventory - Open Government Portal (canada.ca) VRI – 2020 – Forest Vegetation Composite Polygons Used to establish which forest areas have been harvested within the last 5 years. BC Data Catalogue https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/ dataset/vri-2020-forest-vegetationcomposite-polygons GeoBC Atlas Integrated Transportation Network (dgtl_road_atlas.gdb) Used to establish road density condition variable. BC Data Catalogue https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca The inventory project defined a total of 926,389 hectares (ha) of assets, as noted in Table 2. The vast majority of this is forest cover, followed by shrublands. TABLE 2: SUMMARY OF NATURAL ASSETS BY TYPE - RDKB Natural Asset Type Total Area (ha) Forest 688,417 Shrubland 60,888 Grassland 10,032 Water 5,072 Agriculture 4,087 Wetland 1,803 Total 926,389 Asset registry MNAI gathered the data, sorted and analyzed it for relevance, and then delineated the type, location and extent of natural assets within the scoped project area. Each asset was then assigned a unique identification number to allow individual assets to be selected, analyzed, and the corresponding data manipulated as required. For example, changes in condition can be noted for individual assets. The information pertaining to each asset was then placed into a tabular asset registry. An excerpt from the registry showing natural asset characteristics is in Table 3. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB), B.C. 64 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 3: XCERPT OF NATURAL ASSET REGISTRY FOR RDKB Table 3: Excerpt of natural asset registry for RDKB Online dashboard Inventories may provide more insights when characterised visually in a dashboard, which enables users to explore different aspects of the data. For instance, natural asset information can be quickly summarized by watershed area, or, if users want to dive into the specifics of forest assets, they can quickly filter the data to focus on that particular asset. Figure 3 and Figure 4 are screen shots from the dashboard that MNAI provided to RDKB. The full version can be accessed at https://go.greenanalytics.ca/RDKB. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB), B.C. 65 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca FIGURE 3: SCREENSHOT OF MAIN INVENTORY SUMMARY Figure 3: Screenshot of main inventory summary Condition of natural assets Condition assessments are key aspect of natural asset inventories as they provide an understanding of both the ecological health of natural assets and their ability to provide services. This information can be reflected in the registry and the dashboard, updated over time, and helps local governments with management decisions. Condition assessments vary in complexity. MNAI completed a desktop-based condition assessment for RDKB and built it into the inventory to provide an initial understanding of the status of the natural assets for the municipality. The condition assessment steps and indicators are summarized in Table 4. TABLE 4. CONDITION ASSESSMENT APPROACH AND INDICATORS - GOLDEN Description & Methods for Indicator Quantification Data used to Quantify Indicator Percent Natural The percent natural cover within each watershed asset area. Measured as the area of natural assets (e.g., forest, wetlands, shrubland) divided by the total area of the watershed. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB), B.C. 66 Natural asset inventory Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 4. CONDITION ASSESSMENT APPROACH AND INDICATORS - GOLDEN Percent Impervious The percent impervious cover within each watershed asset area. Measured as the area of Impervious area (e.g., developed areas, roads) divided by the total area of the watershed. Natural asset inventory. Percent Interior Forest The percent of interior forest area Natural asset inventory. relative to total forest area within each watershed asset area. Interior forest is considered any forest area within a 100m inward buffer of forest edge. The indicated is measured as the area of interior area divided by the total forest area of each watershed. Percent of forest Any forest stand that was indicated harvested within the last as having been harvested in 2015 5 years or later was extracted from the VRI dataset and linked to associated natural assets. The indicator is measured as area of forest harvest since 2015 divided by the total area of forest within each watershed. VRI Data Once conditions were allocated to each asset, an overall score was derived for the project area. The maximum possible score for an asset was 40, based on a possible 10 points for each of 4 categories:  Natural area: percent natural area within each watershed (points are allocated based on 1 point for every 10% natural and rounded to the nearest integer).  Impervious area: percent impervious land use area within each watershed (0 points if impervious area is > 20% of watershed, 5 points if > 10%, and 10 points if < 10%).  Interior Forest: percent interior forest area relative to total forest area (points are allocated based on 1 point for every 10% of interior forest area and rounded to the nearest integer).  Recently harvested: percent of Forest Harvested in the last 5 years (0 points if area recently harvested is > 10% of forest area, 5 points if < 10%, and 10 points if no harvesting occurred). The total condition score was then converted into a rating scale:  Good - assets with a score of 30 or higher  Fair - assets with a score between 20 to 29  Poor - assets with a score between 10 to 19  Very Poor - assets with a score lower than 10 Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB), B.C. 67 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Figure 4 is a snapshot of the condition assessment results as presented in the inventory dashboard for Golden. FIGURE 4: SNAPSHOT OF CONDITION ASSESSMENT DETAILS Figure 4: Snapshot of condition assessment details About 398,007 ha (or 43 per cent) of natural assets were assessed in good condition and 503,192 ha (or 54 per cent) were assessed in fair condition. Table 5 summarizes condition rating for RDKBs. TABLE 5. SUMMARY OF NATURAL ASSET CONDITION RATINGS - RDKB Condition Rating Area (ha) 1. Good 398,007 2. Fair 503,192 Risk identification 3. Poor 25,198 Total 926,389 At the time of writing, RDKB had not completed the risk identification. Implications This section offers insights that can be gained from considering the inventory, condition, risk, and asset management readiness assessment. However, since the risks and readiness assessments were not available at the time of writing, it was not possible to complete this section. Toward natural asset management in Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB), B.C. 68 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Rossland Mini-Report Rossland is a city in the West Kootenay region of south central British Columbia with a population of approximately 3,700. Source: Wikipedia BRITISH COLUMBIA Rossland Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 69 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Rossland City of Rossland Mini-Report The City of Rossland’s asset management readiness assessment indicates it has made significant progress in asset management and is well on its way towards embedding it as an organization-wide business process that is applied consistently across different service areas. The assessment also indicates asset management is well aligned with, and informed by, overall organizational policy objectives. Rossland is at an early stage in integrating natural asset management considerations into these processes. Rossland’s cross-functional asset management team includes planning and finance staff that lead, communicate, and support improvements to natural asset management and are working on championing its incorporation into core asset management (AM) practices. Rossland is in the process of making its council aware of the resourcing and funding needed to incorporate natural asset management into the AM system requirements and roadmap. Natural asset inventory Inventory overview The inventory was scoped to the Rossland municipal district boundary. The inventory has two main components: a tabular asset registry and an online dashboard. MNAI provided the registry as Excel data, and the dashboard in a website format. Information on the condition of the assets is a subset of the inventory and is depicted in both the registry and dashboard. Inventory data MNAI used the most recently available annual crop inventory data produced by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) as baseline for land use / land cover 1 and combined this with data Rossland provided to depict the natural assets. Table 1 describes the data sources used to develop the inventory and condition assessment. 1 For more information on AAFC annual crop inventory, see: Annual Crop Inventory Open Government Portal (canada.ca) Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 70 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF DATA SOURCES - ROSSLAND Item Use Source Rossland Boundary To establish the study area boundary. Rossland provided. AAFC Annual Crop Inventory To establish a baseline land cover / land use. Annual Crop Inventory - Open Government Portal (canada.ca) Rossland Wetlands Used to improve the land cover / land use of the AAFC by prioritizing local wetland data in the asset inventory. Rossland provided. Rossland OCP Designation To define what land use activities are Rossland provided. permitted around defined natural assets. Soil Survey To define primary, secondary, and tertiary soil types for each natural asset. Rossland provided. Global Man-made Impervious Surface Dataset Informed the condition assessment. NASA https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/GlobalMan-made-Impervious-Surface-GMISDataset-Fr/dkf4-4bi3 GeoBC Atlas Integrated Transportation Network (dgtl_road_atlas.gdb) Used to establish road density condition variable. BC Data Catalogue https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca The inventory project defined a total of 4,299 individual assets covering 5,429 hectares (ha) of the municipal area, as noted in Table 2. The majority of this area is forest cover, followed by shrubland. TABLE 2: SUMMARY OF NATURAL ASSETS BY TYPE - ROSSLAND Natural Asset Type Number of Assets Total Area (ha) Average Asset Area (ha) Forest 1,465 4,606 3.14 Grassland 88 31 0.35 Greenspace 63 80 1.27 Shrubland 2,378 675 0.28 Water 23 6 0.27 Wetland 282 31 0.11 Total 4,299 5,429 1.26 Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 71 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Rossland Asset registry MNAI gathered the data, sorted and analyzed it for relevance, and then delineated the type, location and extent of natural assets within the scoped project area. Each asset was then assigned a unique identification number to allow individual assets to be selected, analyzed, and the corresponding data manipulated as required. For example, changes in condition can be noted for individual assets. The information pertaining to each asset was then placed into a tabular asset registry. An excerpt from the registry showing natural asset characteristics is in Table 3. TABLE 3: ROSSLAND NATURAL ASSET REGISTRY Table 3: Screenshot of main inventory registry Online dashboard Inventories may provide more insights when characterised visually in a dashboard, which enables users to explore different aspects of the data. For instance, natural asset information can be quickly summarized by zoning designation, or, if users want to dive into the specifics of forest assets, they can quickly filter the data to focus on that particular asset. Figure 3 and Figure 4 are screen shots from the dashboard that MNAI provided to Rossland. The full version can be accessed at https://go.greenanalytics.ca/rossland. Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 72 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca FIGURE 3: SCREENSHOT OF MAIN INVENTORY SUMMARY Figure 3: Screenshot of main inventory summary Condition of natural assets Condition assessments are key aspect of natural asset inventories as they provide an understanding of both the ecological health of natural assets and their ability to provide services. This information can be reflected in the registry and the dashboard, updated over time, and helps local governments with management decisions. Condition assessments can vary in complexity. MNAI completed a desktopbased condition assessment for Rossland and built it into the inventory to provide an initial understanding of the status of the natural assets for the municipality. The condition assessment steps and indicators are summarized in Table 4. Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 73 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 4. CONDITION ASSESSMENT APPROACH AND INDICATORS - ROSSLAND Description & Methods for Indicator Quantification Data used to Quantify Indicator Relative asset size For each natural and semi-natural asset type, total area is calculated and a rank is assigned to the assets within each class based on its percentile score. Natural assets within the top third of the ranking (e.g., the largest assets within a class) received a high (10), those within the middle third of the ranking received a medium (5), and those within the bottom third of the ranking received a low (1). Surface permeability The permeability of surfaces is ranked on a scale of low to high depending on the type of landcover present.  Assets within impervious surfaces are assigned as low permeability.  Agriculture and shrublands are ranked as medium. Natural asset inventory Natural asset inventory, spatial representations of land uses and roads, as well as the Global Man-made impervious surfaces dataset from NASA. https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/GlobalMan-made-Impervious-Surface-GMISDataset-Fr/dkf4-4bi3  Wetlands, waterbodies and forests are ranked as high. Road density Road density was determined by first establishing a 1 km2 hexagonal tessellation of the study areas. Road density was then calculated for each 1km2 hexagon. Natural assets within each hexagon were allocated the corresponding road density and given a condition rating of low (1) if density is > 2 km per km², medium (5) if it is between 1 and 2, or high (10) if it is < 1. Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 74 Natural asset inventory GeoBC Atlas Integrated Transportation Network Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca TABLE 4. CONDITION ASSESSMENT APPROACH AND INDICATORS - ROSSLAND Adjacent land use A 100m buffer is applied to each intensity natural asset to determined what land uses surround each asset. Land use within the 100m buffer is allocated a land use intensity rating on a scale of 0 to 100 where 100 is considered the most intense land uses and 0 is natural land cover. Intensity ratings are as follows: Natural asset inventory plus spatial representation of land use as well as intensity rankings of land uses.  Developed = 72.5  Barren (e.g., construction or mining areas) = 60  Agriculture = 40  Natural areas = 0 Each natural asset is assigned an adjacent land use intensity score out of 100 based on an area weighted average of the surrounding land use intensities. Adjacent land use intensity scores out of 100 are converted to a scale out of 10 by dividing the weighted average score by 10 and rounding to the nearest integer. The condition score is then calculated as 10 minus the adjusted intensity score, so that larger numbers indicated better asset condition, in line with the other indicators. Once conditions were allocated to each asset, an overall score was derived for the project area. The maximum possible score for an asset was 40, based on a possible 10 points for each of 4 categories:  Road density conditions are rated low (1) if density is > 2 km per km², medium (5) if it is between 1 and 2, or high (10) if it is < 1.  Surface permeability rated as high (10), medium (5), or low (1).  Adjacent intensive land use (scale from 0 to 10 where 10 indicates the asset is surrounded by natural areas and 0 indicates the asset is surrounded by heavily developed area).  Relative asset size where the largest 3rd areas receive 10, 5 for middle 3rd, and 1 point for the lowest 3rd. Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 75 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Rossland The total condition score was then converted into a rating scale:  Good - assets with a score of 30 or higher  Fair - assets with a score between 20 to 29  Poor - assets with a score between 10 to 19  Very Poor - assets with a score lower than 10 Figure 4 summarizes the condition assessment as presented in Rossland’s natural asset inventory dashboard. FIGURE 4: SNAPSHOT OF CONDITION ASSESSMENT DETAILS Figure 4: Snapshot of condition assessment details About 3,580 ha (or 66 per cent) of natural assets were assessed in good condition and 1,488 ha (or 27 per cent) were assessed in fair condition. Greenspace, shrubland and wetland assets were largely rated fair and poor. This is due to a combination of these assets being in close proximity to intense land uses and being relatively small in size. Note, however, that these assets only account for a small portion of the overall natural asset area (about 14 per cent when combined). The forest assets are generally in good (76 per cent of forest assets) condition or fair (21 per cent of forest assets) condition. The forest assets in poor condition are due to being next to relatively more intense land uses and being relatively small in size. Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 76 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Table 5 summarizes condition ratings and Figure 5 summarizes condition by natural asset type. TABLE 5. SUMMARY OF NATURAL ASSET CONDITION RATINGS - GOLDEN Condition Rating Number of Assets Total Area (ha) Average Total Score 1. Good 296 3,580 12.09 2. Fair 2,209 1,488 0.67 3. Poor 1,708 350 0.20 4. Very Poor 63 5 0.08 Total 4,276 5,423 1.27 FIGURE 5. SUMMARY OF CONDITION RATING BY NATURAL ASSET TYPE Figure 5: Summary of condition rating by natural asset type Risk identification Risk identification tool overview Identifying risks facing natural assets can help local governments prioritize their management of natural assets. To this end, MNAI provides local governments with a tool entitled Risk Identification Process in the Development of Natural Asset Inventories and guidance to assist them in self-administering it. The results follow. Local government responses are in Annex 1. Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 77 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Rossland Using the risk identification tool Using the risk tool, Rossland considered risks that the loss of natural asset functions could pose to built infrastructure, personal health and safety, and private property, including:  Overuse of trails  Dumping  Flooding (current and future)  Forest fire  Invasive species  Recreational pressure  Development pressure  Industrial activity (forestry/mining)  Pollutant loading from urban, agricultural, or industrial sources (e.g., overuse of salt on roads)  Drought (current and future)  Erosion  Ice jams  Storm surge  Construction activity  Political policy change MNAI then placed each risk in a risk matrix and positioned it according to the probability of an impact occurring and the relative magnitude of its negative consequences (see Figure 6). Results of the risk identification process The risk identification process revealed:  6 high-level risks (forest fire, invasive species, pollutant loading, drought, political policy change, and construction activity)  6 medium-level risks (overuse of trails, flooding, recreational pressure, development pressure, industrial activity and erosion)  1 low-level risk (dumping) The identified risks affect natural assets across municipal areas, trails, and riparian zones. Rossland has also provided cues, or indicators, for rising risk, as well as the size of risk zones. Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 78 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca FIGURE 6: RESULTS OF RISK MANAGEMENT PROCESS - ROSSLAND LEGEND Figure 6: Snapshot of condition assessment details Implications This section offers insights that can be gained from considering the inventory, condition, risk and asset management readiness assessment. Potential priorities for the local government Potential priorities on which Rossland could focus natural asset management efforts include:  Forest fire: Forest fires associated with hotter summers and low reservoirs could result in catastrophic consequences to municipal areas in the region. With residences and businesses located close to forests and wildlife areas, Rossland participates in the FireSmart program, but has limited opportunities for involvement in the forestry process. Rossland has also completed a Community Wildfire Protection Plan, Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 79 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Rossland with a focus on fuel management to reduce forest fuel buildup around the community2.  Invasive species: Invasive species impact across all municipal areas, crowding native species; however, limited resources are available to achieve desired monitoring or management. Rossland has adopted a Bylaw requiring its citizens to ensure their property remains free from noxious weeds, which currently include knotweeds3. Rossland is tracking indicators that include citizen observations and increased applications for rebates.  Pollutant Loading: Pollutant loading from urban, agricultural and industrial sources is of concern in one quarter of municipal areas. Rossland has a limited formal drainage system, with all stormwater draining into Trail Creek or the Topping Creek Catchment. Excess levels of pollution could impact fish and aquatic species within these creeks, their tributaries and wetlands, and ultimately the Columbia River.  Drought: Rossland recognizes drought driven by hotter temperatures and low reservoirs as a high risk with potentially catastrophic consequences. The need for immediate action is noted. Rossland is fully water metered which has reduced the water usage in the City dramatically. The City has a Water Smart Action Plan to continue to reduce usage and investigate leaks and a bylaw to regulate water use in the summer months based on reservoir levels. Rossland could look to neighbouring communities for additional advice and lessons learned related to water quantity and quality monitoring sites, drought management plans and water reduction targets.  Political policy change: Policy changes can have unintended consequences on natural assets across Rossland, which can take time to emerge. Natural asset management can provide an opportunity to amend bylaws and regulations to protect critical natural assets, such as valley bottoms, steep slopes, and wetlands.  Construction activity: Rossland is experiencing an increase in building permits across all municipal areas. The accompanying increase in impermeable areas and loss of natural assets can exacerbate existing risks, such as pollutant loading and drought. 2 City of Rossland, 2015. 3 City of Rossland, 2018. Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 80 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Table 6 lists and provides brief descriptions of risk mitigation strategies. TABLE 6: RISK MITIGATION STRATEGIES - ROSSLAND Accept Risk may be acceptable if probability and consequences are small Minimize Risk under local government’s control that warrants exposure reduction Share Partners in a project permit the sharing of larger risks to reduce it for each Transfer Insurance, fixed price contracts, and other risk transfer tools. Opportunities to strengthen natural asset management at an organization-wide level Rossland can use its existing asset management process to integrate natural assets into its overall asset management system. Rossland identified potential areas it is interested in strengthening for both engineered and natural assets. For engineered assets a priority is to develop a roadmap and update planned projects for the next 1-5 years, and to develop accompanying performance measures to measure progress. Rossland also identified the need to add natural asset management to its Strategic Plan and Objectives, incorporate natural assets into policy, and create an inventory of natural assets. Rossland has captured capital and operating expenditure data for most assets and linked it to financial information for all critical assets. It is in the process of calculating service delivery costs for critical assets. The inventory of natural assets is a first step towards establishing a value for the services natural assets are providing. Rossland’s asset investment planning does not include a documented approach to managing or protecting the natural assets that support municipal service delivery, because asset management plans currently focus on addressing needs related to grey infrastructure assets. Rossland’s annual capital and operating budgets do include operations and maintenance costs for some natural assets when they exist alongside grey infrastructure assets that are being maintained (e.g., culverts and roadside ditches). While some commitments have been made to conserve or protect critical natural assets/areas, they have not yet translated into formal natural asset management plans; this could be an important next step for Rossland to better integrate natural asset considerations into planning, decision-making and the 10-year long-term financial plan it is currently developing. To develop staff capacity in natural asset management, a key next step could be to complete a staff competency review to identify required skillsets for natural asset management and to fill essential gaps. Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 81 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca City of Rossland Finally, it will be important to identify priority natural assets and the resources required to incorporate natural asset management into Rossland’s asset management system and requirements to make progress on the asset management readiness scale. If the local government wants to use the inventory as the starting place for a full natural asset management project, including implementation, then Annex 2 contains steps to consider. Possible actions for further development of the inventory Based on the inventory, Rossland could consider the following, regardless of whether or not it pursues a full natural asset management process. These are mostly incremental measures.  Determine acceptable levels of risk to inform Rossland’s risk mitigation strategies.  Identify linkages between services and assets and assess the condition of, and risks to, the assets from the perspective of their ability to deliver services.  Share the inventory to stimulate collaboration and lessons learned with adjacent local governments (e.g., drought management).  Examine how urban development, forest fire, pollutant loading, and political pressures could increase risk to assets.  Initiate or enhance monitoring - for example, using gauges, water level sensors, and loggers to improve understanding of trends, feed into condition ratings of assets, and gather information for modelling.  Schedule regular updates (e.g., every 3-5 years) of the Inventory, Condition and Risk to understand trends. Toward natural asset management in City of Rossland, B.C. 82 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Sources City of Cranbrook. June 2020. State of Climate Adaptation. Cranbrook_StateofClimateAdaptation_Report_Final_June2020.pdf Golder Associated Ltd. 2019. Golden Landfill Environmental Monitoring Plan. https://www.csrd.bc.ca/sites/default/files/SolidWaste/17006%202019%20 Landfill%20Monitoring%20Five%20Year%20Update.pdf Hackett, T. 2019. Golden’s Community Invasive Plant Program. Annual Report 2019. CIPP-Final-Report-2019_Final-Aug-12-2019.pdf Regional District of Central Kootenay. 2019. Drinking Water Conservation Plan. 2019-05-21-WAT_water_conservation_plan_final.pdf Regional District of Central Kootenay. 2019. Flood Mapping Study underway across the Regional District of Central Kootenay. https://rdck.ca/EN/meta/ news/news-archives/2019-news-archive/flood-mapping-study-underwayacross-the-regional-district-of-central-kootenay.html City of Rossland. 2015. City of Rossland Community Wildfire Protection Plan Update – September 2015. City-Hall_public-notice_cwpp-updateseptember-2015_2015-09-14.pdf City of Rossland. 2018. Bylaw 2637 Invasive Species Knotweed. City-services_ development-services_bylaw-2637---invasive-species---knotweed_2018-09-06 Federation of Canadian Municipalities. October 2018. Asset Management Readiness Scale: Municipal Asset Management Program. https://fcm.ca/sites/default/files/documents/resources/tool/assetmanagement-readiness-scale-mamp.pdf MNAI. Defining and Scoping Municipal Natural Assets. June 2017. https://mnai.ca/media/2019/07/SP_MNAI_Report-1-_June2019-2.pdf MNAI. Results from the First National Cohort. Decision-maker summary. 2018. https://mnai.ca/media/2019/08/spmnaijuly31-summaryweb.pdf MNAI. Cohort 2 National Project Overview. February 2020. https://mnai.ca/media/2020/02/MNAI-CohortSummary.pdf Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 83 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Annex 1: Results of local government risk identification This Annex contains the results of the local governments’ use of MNAI’s risk identification tool, which they self-administered with guidance from MNAI. Table 1 for each community was the main product that resulted from the exercise and provided by the local government. Table 1: Simplified risk identification survey - Cranbrook Ranking Low (L), Medium (M) High (H) Assets Affected and ID # Location (on map, with risk #) 1/ Overuse of trails High Probability /Medium Consequence Forests Wetlands Watershed Elizabeth Lake Community Forest 14th Avenue Forest Rotary Trail Joseph Creek and Gold Creek Manageable Tolerable Watershed Management Plan – Includes recreation, ATV’s, cattle grazing 2/ Dumping on Land High Probability / Low Risk Agriculture Grassland Forest Creek Aquifer Elizabeth Lake Manageable Tolerable 3/ Flooding High Probability /Medium Consequence Forest Grassland Wetland Joseph Creek Baker Park Elizabeth Lake Pop Price Park Imminent Risk - Low Manageable NDMP Flood Risk Assessment – Floodplain Mapping 4/ Forest fire Medium Probability Forests / High Consequence Grassland Elizabeth Lake Community Forest 14th Avenue Forest Watershed & Reservoirs Shadow Mountain Tembec Lands Imminent Manageable – To a certain degree Interface mitigation and fuel removal Moir Park Elizabeth Lake Above gravel pit Reservoir Joseph Creek Idlewild Park Imminent Risk Manageable Risk 5/ Invasive Medium Probability species, / Medium Noxious Consequence Weeds, Nonnative species Forests Grassland Agriculture Shrubland Wetland Creeks Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 84 Notes Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Table 1: Simplified risk identification survey - Cranbrook Risk Ranking Low (L), Medium (M) High (H) 6/ Development pressure Assets Affected and ID # Location (on map, with risk #) Medium Probability / Low Consequence Forests Agriculture Grassland Creek Aquifer Tembec Lands Aquifer Creekside Properties Downtown Future Risk Manageable Tolerable 7/ Pollutant loading (urban and rural) Medium Probability / Medium Consequence Wetland Creek Watershed Homes along Joseph Creek Ranches Crown Cattle Lease Area Imminent Risk Unmanageable – to a certain degree 8/ Pollutant loading (industrial) Medium Probability / Medium Consequence Forests Agriculture Grassland Creek Wetland Tembec Lands Surface Runoff Roads/Parking Lots Future Risk Manageable 9/ Drought Medium Probability Forests / High Consequence Grassland Agriculture Wetland Water Shrubland Aquifer Reservoir Watershed Reservoir Aquifer/Groundwater Future Risk Unmanageable Intolerable 10/ Erosion Low Probability / Low Consequence Wetlands Water Creek Watershed Joseph Creek Watershed Future Manageable Tolerable 11/ Political policy change Low Probability / Medium Consequence Water Wetlands Forest Watershed Aquifer Watershed Logging Irrigation use – Water Sustainability Act Future Manageable – within jurisdiction Tolerable 12/ Construction activity Medium Probability / Medium Consequence Wetlands Water Forest Watershed Logging Roads Land Development Watershed Future Manageable – within jurisdiction Tolerable 13/ Lack of Monitoring Reports Medium Probability / Medium Consequence Water Wetlands Watershed Watershed Aquifer/Groundwater Manageable Tolerable Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 85 Notes Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Table 2: Simplified risk identification survey - Golden Ranking Low (L), Medium (M) High (H) Risk Assets Affected and ID # Location (on map, with risk #) Notes 1/ Overuse of trails L >16km Throughout Town Applies primarily to gravel trail 2/ Illegal Dumping L 2000 m² South beach Environmental pollution, potential fire hazard located adjacent to forest 3/ Flooding M >5 km Along Kicking Horse River Applies to diking. 4/ Flooding M 800 m Along Hospital Creek Applies to diking. 5/ Flooding M 105.57 ha Wetlands, various locations within municipal boundary 6/ Forest fire H 312.3 ha Primarily northern and eastern lengths of municipal boundary Applies to entire Town limits 7/ Invasive species L–H 475.29 ha Various locations within municipal boundary Mapped per IAPP registration. Known infestation of Fir Bark Beatle SE forested area (15.7 ha, mapped) 8/ Development pressure L 4.5 Ha/ 40 ha South and north benches, respectively Existing timber stand subject to removal for development 9/ Pollutant loading from urban, agricultural, or industrial sources M Throughout Town Various private properties Applies to industrial pollutant potential of aquifer. Aquifer and contaminated sites mapped. 10/ Drought L Throughout Town Various locations within municipal boundary Applies to municipal trees, forest stands, grasslands and shrub lands 11/ Erosion L 13 ha, 2400 m Respectively, South bench and steep erodible slopes adjacent to rail line Based on potential loss of timber to Fir Bark Beatle infestation and resultant exposure of steep slopes. Second area already exposed. 12/ Ice jams L 21.6 ha areas Along Kicking Horse River Could result in service disruptions to dike pathways Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 86 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Table 2: Simplified risk identification survey - Golden Ranking Low (L), Medium (M) High (H) Risk Assets Affected and ID # Location (on map, with risk #) Notes 13/ Political policy change L Throughout Town Private property Applies to potential water bottling development/ aquifer impact. 14/ Construction activity L Throughout Town Various locations within municipal boundary Applies to lack of soil deposit policy/ bylaw and potential for invasive introduction Assets Affected Location Notes Table 3: Simplified risk identification survey - RDCK Ranking Low (L), Medium (M) High (H) Risk 1/ Low flows H All of Arrow Creek Watershed Throughout watershed Seasonal low flows, drought management strategies in place 2/ Competing demands H All of Arrow Creek Watershed Throughout watershed Managed by the RDCK, Erickson Water Commission and Town of Creston 3/ Increasing agriculture use H All of Arrow Creek Watershed Throughout watershed Being assessed to create management plans 4/ Increasing commercial use M All of Arrow Creek Watershed Throughout watershed Being assessed to create management plans 5/ Increasing residential connections L All of Arrow Creek Watershed Throughout watershed Requests have been received but cannot be accommodated based on current flows 6/ Clearwater Flooding H All of Arrow Creek Watershed Impact to Erickson communities and engineered infrastructure Applies to whole watershed 7/ Road construction and maintenance L All of Arrow Creek Watershed Active logging areas Applies to whole watershed, managed by community forest 8/ Recreational impact overuse M All of Arrow Creek Watershed In active recreational areas Unregulated therefore impact could be significant Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 87 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Table 3: Simplified risk identification survey - RDCK Ranking Low (L), Medium (M) High (H) Risk Assets Affected Location Notes 9/ Introduction of invasive species L All of Arrow Creek Watershed Throughout watershed Unknown if being managed 10/ Wildfire H All of Arrow Creek Watershed Throughout watershed Community forest is managing Table 4: Simplified risk identification survey - RDEK Ranking Low (L), Medium (M) High (H) Assets Affected 1/ Ice Jam H Same as below 2/ Flooding (current & future) H Water treatment plant, highway, residences, RV park, agricultural areas, recreation opportunities on the lake (creating a larger alluvial fan), Health risk – septic systems flooded and carried into lake, water intakes affected (quality) 3/ Overuse of trails (future) L Trail (future trails), pressure to construct random/unsanctioned trails Future risk 4/ Forest Fire H Water treatment plan, residences, ag areas, riparian vegetation Interface fuel management could mitigate risk 5/ Invasive Species M Ag areas, habitat When mitigation happens with machinery, there is heightened opportunity for impacts from or establishment of invasive L/M Wildlife, water resources, Creek Risk 6/ Development pressure Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 88 Location Notes Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Table 4: Simplified risk identification survey - RDEK Ranking Low (L), Medium (M) High (H) Risk Assets Affected Location 7/ Pollutant loading (industrial, agricultural, residential) L/M Windermere Creek, Windermere Lake (water source for East Side of Windermere), (Gypsum mine turbidity, dust, fuels from equipment) 8/ Drought L/M Ag have water licences, water sources (groundwater and Lake Windermere) 9/ Erosion/ debris flow M/H Windermere Creek, Lake Windermere, Flooding could result (see flooding risk), Culvert under highway. 10/ Lack of funding for proactive mitigation (only operate on emergency response) M 11/ No current flood mapping (only original provincial mapping from 1982) M Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia Notes Unsure if risk is actual or perceived Scoping underway to develop service area for flood mitigation 89 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Table 5: Simplified risk identification survey - Rossland Likelihood Consequence Rare Unlikely Possible Likely Certain Insignificant Minor Moderate Major Catastrophic 1/ Overuse of trails Likely 2/ Dumping L-Low M-Med Action H-High Required Assets Affected Location throughout city Cues Minor M Planned action required 180 km Trail Applies to deterioration all trails in the Rossland area Possible Minor L Manage by routine procedures 5429 ha Citizen complaints Applies to all municipal area 3/ Flooding Possible Moderate M Manage by routine procedures 542 ha (10%) Heavy rainfall events Riparian zones of all streams throughout the municipal area 4/ Forest fire Possible Catastrophic H Prioritized action required 5429 ha Hotter summers, low reservoirs Applies to all municipal areas 5/ Invasive species Likely Major H Prioritized action required 5429 ha Increased applications for rebates, Citizen Observations Applies to all municipal areas 6/ Recreational Pressure Likely Moderate M Prioritized action required 1357 ha (25%) Increased recreational activity Skiing, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, hiking, biking etc etc 7/ Development Possible pressure Moderate M Prioritized action required 1357 ha (25%) Increased building permit activity Applies to specific municipal areas 8/ Industrial activity (Forestry/ mining) Moderate M Provincial standards 1357 ha Obser(25%) vations watersheds Risk Possible Rank Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 90 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Notes Watersheds Table 5: Simplified risk identification survey - Rossland Likelihood Consequence Rare Unlikely Possible Likely Certain Insignificant Minor Moderate Major Catastrophic 9/ Pollutant loading from urban, agricultural, or industrial sources Possible Major H Prioritized action required 1357 ha (25%) Citizen complaints Applies to specific municipal areas 10/ Drought Likely Catastrophic H Immediate corrective action 5429 ha Hotter temperatures, low reservoirs Applies to all municipal areas 11/ Erosion Likely Minor M Planned action required 5429 ha Climate extremes Applies to all municipal areas 12/ Ice jams – – – – – Not applicable Not applicable 13/ Storm surge na na na na na na na 14/ Political Policy Change Possible Major H Prioritized Action Required 5429 ha Elections Applies to all municipal areas Major H Prioritized Action Required 180 km 5429 ha Increase in building permits Applies to all municipal areas Risk 15/ Construction Likely Activity (Same as development pressure) Rank L-Low M-Med Action H-High Required Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 91 Assets Affected Location throughout city Cues Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Notes Annex 2: Moving to a full project Following are steps to consider for local government wishing to use the inventory as the starting place for a full natural asset management project, including implementation 1/ Confirm scope, roles and responsibilities. Undertake a meeting or workshop to confirm (a) assumptions [for example, that water management and development pressure are the primary services of concern] (b) roles, responsibilities and capacities (c) community capacity to undertake a larger project. 2/ Fill essential knowledge gaps. If discussions on scope and certainty and related data needs for modelling indicate the need for additional data, these could be filled. 3/ Modelling. Modelling the levels of service that natural assets currently provide, and the levels of service under different potential management, local climate change projections, and rehabilitation or restoration scenarios, is central to natural asset management as it gives communities the ability to explore how different actions will affect the health and corresponding performance of natural assets. 4/ Economic assessment. The economic assessment component provides a market-based indication of (a) the value of the services from natural assets if they had to be provided by an engineered means, and (b) the costs and values of different interventions in terms of service delivery. The latter answers questions such as “what happens to the services provided by the wetland if everyone builds upstream?” or “what happens to the services if the forest is restored?” 5/ Planning. Based on the foregoing, the communities will have the opportunity to undertake actions ranging from status quo to planning, regulatory, financial operations, maintenance, acquisition and monitoring interventions. These would occur during the natural asset management planning phase and MNAI would be able to provide technical support as required throughout. 6/ Implementation. MNAI can provide ongoing advice / guidance on policy pieces and integration of the above information over a period of 1218 months. After this point, the local government, together with local partners and service providers, would ideally have the capacity to continue these efforts on their own. 7/ Ongoing monitoring. Project monitoring is essential to learn whether interventions are working and to share lessons and learnings from other communities undertaking natural asset management. MNAI would typically stay involved with the community for a period of three years through a monitoring arrangement to be established with the communities. Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 92 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Toward natural asset management in Kootenays, British Columbia 93 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative MNAI.ca Municipal Natural Assets Initiative