What is a forest?

image of a maple forest.

鈥淎 dense growth of trees and underbrush covering a large tract鈥 according to Webster鈥檚 online dictionary. Forests can range from a small plot of trees in an urban park to large uninhabited tracts of trees. Forests are a complex community of living things including mosses, plants, shrubs, trees and wildlife.

Birds and mammals vary in their use of forests. A white-throated sparrow may require a patch of young forest less than two hectares in size. A black-backed woodpecker may require up to 40 hectares of older forest to live in. A wolverine鈥檚 home range can be up to 100,000 hectares.

Forests in 澳门永利 include commercially managed forest, protected forest, unmanaged tracts in the far north, privately owned forest and forest on First Nations lands.

Total area by land class

The Forest Resources of 澳门永利 2001 was the first in the report series to utilize satellite data. This change allowed for a complete breakdown of all the land and water in the province. The satellite data used in this report was compiled by the MNR between 2002 and 2008 and is based on Landsat 7 imagery and updates. Satellite imagery provides an excellent overview of broad land classes including forests, but does not provide the detail of forest resources inventories (FRI) which form the basis for most of the data in this report. The 26-class data set has been summarized into six broad groups as outlined in the table below.

Map of landcover classes

map of satellite landcover classes in 澳门永利, including water, wetland, field, other, treed wetland, and forest.

Total provincial area by land class and ownership (area in hectares)

Land Class Crown Parks and protected areas Other Total Proportion
Water 16,967,051 1,943,058 525,370 19,435,479 18.1%
Wetland 8,137,549 1,100,620 239,219 9,477,388 8.8%
Field/Agric. 34,434 8,172 5,358,927 5,401,533 5.0%
Other 698,842 448,111 993,518 2,140,471 2.0%
Treed Wetland 12,685,193 1,202,999 1,083,755 14,971,947 13.9%
Forest 44,128,288 5,846,953 6,118,363 56,093,603 52.2%
Total 82,651,356 10,549,912 14,319,153 107,520,421 100.0%

Total provincial area by land class

pie chart of total provinical area by land class, including blue for water, violet for wetlands, beige for field or agiculture, light green for treed wetlands, dark green for forest, and grey for other areas.

Forest resources inventories (FRI)

Traditionally, The Forest Resources of 澳门永利 report series uses FRI to summarize provincial statistics on forest cover as well as land and water classes. Each FRO report is based on a slightly different land base due to the availability and currency of inventories. The 1963 report covered over 70 million hectares (66% of the province), while reports since have are generally limited to the Area of the Undertaking (AOU) and represents the area where forest management is practiced. The current set of inventories covers over 45 million hectares of 澳门永利.

The FRI is a detailed forest map compiled on an ongoing basis by the MNRF and its industry partners. 澳门永利 has been inventorying its forests in this basic style since 1922. With the advent of geographic information systems (GIS) in the late 1980s, digital inventories now provide detailed spatial information about 澳门永利鈥檚 forests. The technology to create and update inventories has been enhanced greatly, with a move from traditional black and white photos to detailed 3D enhanced imagery.

The FRI classifies a land base into land classes called 鈥減olytype鈥 or polygon type. This class includes water, rock, muskeg, unclassified lands as well as productive forest. Each delineated forest polygon is called a 鈥渟tand鈥. Each forest stand is further classified by its ownership, land use type, development stage and ecological characteristics. A detailed description of what is contained in an inventory is available in the Forest Information Manual (2009) available at 澳门永利.ca.

Inventory age is determined by the age of the photography used for the inventory or by the year of update. The inventories used in this report are sourced from the current set of forest management plans, spanning 2008 to 2013. Each inventory has been updated for harvest, fire and insect damage, as well as silviculture activities and renewal surveys up to 2013-14.

Summary tables in this report based on the AOU will utilize FRI, while satellite summaries will be restricted to landcover data. A small portion of non-Crown land within the AOU does not currently have FRI available, and will be based on landcover data.

Sample forest resources inventory map

example of a forest resource inventory map showing the breakdown of where various types of forest and their locations.

Managed forest area (AOU)

The area in 澳门永利 where forest management occurs is referred to as the 鈥淎rea of the Undertaking鈥 or AOU. This version includes both MNR-71 (AOU) and MNR-74 (Whitefeather). Using Landcover, the total managed forest area by ownership is as follows:

Area by land class within the AOU

Land class Crown Parks and protected areas Other Total Proportion
Water 4,623,644 964,341 276,275 5,864,260 13.0%
Wetland 296,676 73,119 97,938 467,734 1.0%
Field/Agric. 13,725 1,777 580,291 595,793 1.3%
Other 282,800 83,247 290,591 656,638 1.5%
Treed Wetland 1,403,805 190,239 182,483 1,776,527 3.9%
Forest 27,793,559 3,245,657 4,578,838 35,618,055 79.2%
Total 34,414,210 4,558,380 6,006,417 44,979,007 100.0%

Total AOU area by land class

chart of the total Area of the Undertaking by land class including by water, open wetland, grass/meadow, agricultural land, rock, unclassified/other, treed wetland, brush/alder, and productive forest.

Although all managed Crown forest within this zone is inventoried, there are some small gaps in the FRI. These gaps include several blocks of private land in the northwest and southern regions, Lake Nipigon and its islands (mostly parks), and Wabikimi Provincial Park, which contains land within and outside the AOU. All subsequent FRI summaries will not include this uninventoried area (see table below).

Uninventoried area within the AOU

Land class Lake Nipigon Unmanaged Crown Lake Nipigon Parks/ Protected Areas Lake Nipigon Other Owners Private Blocks Wabikimi Provincial Park (within AOU) Total
Water 401,290 52,614 87 31,660 124,499 610,149
Wetland 49 32 119 1,858 6,589 8,647
Other 19 31 55 38,858 1,694 40,655
Treed Wetland 14 92 13 10,622 29,572 40,313
Forest 669 43,222 3,694 154,950 536,192 738,727
Total Area 402,040 95,991 3,966 237,948 698,547 1,438,492

Managed forest鈥FRI area summaries

Forest resource inventories classify area into several generalized water and land types. The Forest Management Planning Technical Specifications of the Forest Information Manual (2009) has a detailed description of each polygon type and how they are classified in an inventory. Please note that the methodology for classifying polygons differs from the landcover (above) and the class areas will not be the same.

Area by land class and ownership based on FRI

Forest type Crown Parks and protected areas Other Total Proportion
Water 3,931,971 144,027 700,035 4,776,033 11.0%
Open Wetland 892,943 193,904 113,945 1,200,792 2.8%
Grass/Meadow 6,719 220,990 636 228,344 0.5%
Agricultural Land 1,945 431,435 214 433,593 1.0%
Rock 224,341 84,481 97,788 406,610 0.9%
Unclassified/Other 263,981 354,702 17,964 636,646 1.5%
Treed Wetland 1,037,874 71,243 140,022 1,249,139 2.9%
Brush/Alder 644,530 162,841 58,754 866,125 2.0%
Productive Forest 27,096,419 2,536,280 4,131,301 33,763,999 77.5%
Total Area 34,100,722 4,199,903 5,260,659 43,561,284 100.0%

Total AOU forest by ownership

pie chart indicating total area of understanding forest by ownership with Crown in beige, Parks in green and Other in brown.

Forest area in the FRI is delineated as 鈥渁reas that are capable of producing trees but may not be capable of timber harvesting鈥. Forest data within the FRI has significantly more data fields populated than non-forested data. These forest attributes include species composition, stocking, age and productivity classes and will be discussed further in forest summaries later in this chapter.