Active Growth and Yield Plots in British Columbia with Protected Buffer Zones

An authoritative spatial layer from the Government of British Columbia locates active Permanent Sample Plots for forest growth monitoring. These 16-meter radius plots require protected windfirm buffers of 66 meters in the interior and 116 meters on the coast, with low-accuracy coordinates buffered by 300 meters to prevent omission from planning. The data is maintained in the ISMC database, replacing a previous layer with more accurate and current information.

Use Cases

• Planning timber harvest blocks while avoiding protected research plots based on the mandatory buffer rules.
• Analyzing long-term forest growth trends based on data from partially damaged plots maintained by the program.
• Ground-truthing plot locations for field studies based on the variable coordinate accuracy described.
• Integrating protected area constraints into forest development plans based on the geospatial layer.

Strengths

• Authoritative source for active Permanent Sample Plot locations, maintained in the consolidated ISMC database.
• Specific protection rules defined, including a 50m interior and 100m coastal windfirm buffer radius.
• Includes partially damaged plots to provide critical data on post-disturbance growth over time.

Limitations

• Coordinate accuracy is variable, with plots measured in the 1990s having a wide range and requiring ground truthing.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Government of British Columbia, Inventory Sample Management Consolidation (ISMC) database.

Collection Method

Likely collected through field surveys and measurements for forest inventory.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-22 19:01:52.634293; freshness should be verified.

Geography

British Columbia, Canada, with distinctions between interior and coastal regions.