Regular Quality. Approx. 10 lb. bag. Limit 1. 1.94/ kg COKE OR SPRITE Regular , Diet, Caffeine Free Diet Coke, Coke Classic, Coke Classic Caffeine Free, Fresca, A&W Root Beer 6 - 355 ml tins Plus Deposit. or Canada Dry Ginger Ale, Regular or Lemon or Tonic Water. Perlettes. California Grown. No. 1 Grade 1.70/ kg SUNRISE CHICKEN BURGER 2.99/kg. HICKEN DRUMSTICKS Sunrise. 2 kg. bag. Frozen. 2.167 ke Ib reserved. Some items may not be exactly as shown TIDE DETERGENT WHITE ONIONS U.S. Grown. izorks Ib PROFILE NESDAY, June 10, 1992 Story by Jason Keenan Photos by Brendan Halper John Sherbinin uses the computer mouse to put new forest information into the computer system, and produce up-to-date forest cover maps. There’s a lot more to forestry than removing the timber. “It’s an interesting pro- cess,” said Eric Ramsden, the finance and administra- tion manager at the Arrow Forest District office on Columbia Avenue. “It’s not just cutting down the trees.” The Arrow Forest Dis- trict, stretches from the U.S. border north, to the lower boundary of Glacier Nation- al Park. The western bound- ary is the Christina Range of the Monashee mountains, while the eastern boundary runs from the peak of the Kootenay Pass, loops in a westerly direction away from Nelson up to Kokanee Park, and continues up through Trout Lake to Glacier Park. Managing forest tenures, insect and disease control, fire fighting, and recreation (forest trail) management are just a part of the work that goes on at the office. Some of those departments collect the information used by the mapping and design department. That department plays a key role in the cataloguing of all the information, as well as the cutting licence application process, and the management of forest resources in the district. The Geographical Infor- mation System (GIS) plays an important role in keeping track of the forests across the province. All of the information collected is kept in digital format on comput- ers, and forms a province wide data base of timber resources. “It’s such a big land base we have to administer, we had to go digital” said Ian Gordon, Systems Adminis- trator at the office. “B.C. is a world leader in this area,” he added. One of the first maps of the Castlegar region was drawn and coloured by hand in 1936. Maps like that took days or weeks to complete; now they can be finished in a few hours. By linking the graphics and mapping component into the digital information database, detailed profiles of the forest region are avail- able. “The main thing we use GIS for, that we cannot do any other way, is overlap- ping all the levels of infor- mation,” said Gordon. “The GIS can produce three- dimensional terrain models, information overlay maps, forest cover maps, and Teports.” There are 63 levels of information in the database, and this office is responsible for keeping track of them all. Those information levels include data on land owner- ship, and land accessibility. “If you had 64 maps this size, and stacked them all together, the GIS is what you’d have,” he added. Combining certain informa- tion with the forest cover maps allow the office to see forest distribution by differ- ent criteria, such as who owns the land, or watershed. The forest cover maps are the centre of the system. “They show you what is on the ground.” The maps most people are used to usu- ally show things like high- ways, railways, towns, and parks. Tree farm licences, like Pope and Talbot’s TFL 23, are not included in the survey. Companies are responsible for their own surveys and mapping, work usually contracted out to private forestry consultants. A forest cover map breaks down the district into areas called polygons, which rep- resent timber stands of simi- lar characteristics. The factors considered in defin- ing a polygon are the promi- nent type, age, height, stem thickness, and crown cover (amount of the ground cov- ered) of the trees, as well as the productivity of the land. It’s a generalization of the area, and might not be exactly correct. Forest cover maps ar® produced by a combination of ground work and office work. The ground work is done with actual inventory plots which forest workers go out to and carefully measure. Then, back in the office, the remainder of the survey is done using air photos, and a stereoscope. With two identical photos and the stereoscope, the images of the forest become three-dimensional, and the information can be collect- ed. The district office’s cur- rent major project is a tim- ber supply analysis. “We're looking at what timber will be around in 20 years,” said Gordon. So many items have to be taken in to account for this survey, including what areas will be ready for harvest two decades from now, the visu- al constraints, adjacent areas of logging, the watershed, soils, slope, insect problems, and wildlife concerns. “GIS doesn’t make deci- sions, it just provides the information to the people who make the decisions,” said Gordon. As environ- mental concerns grow, more and more factors like recre- ation, wildlife concems, and Preservation of virgin wilderness have to be taken in to account. “A lot of the work we do in GIS is providing the information for public meet- ings and public presenta- tions,” said Ramsden. “To be able to cut trees, you have to submit a refor- estation or silvicultureB plan,” he said. Private land is an exception to the rule, but things may change. “Attitudes are changing, so private land uses are changing.” +++ 4 ac rare smiuwer reamace rare | The arrow on the left side of the forest cover map points to an area called a polygon. The polygons represent timber stands of similar characteristics. ’ 4 aps puterized. They form a part of the province-wide database that catalogues the vast fore: st resources of B.C.