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Technology Feature:
Virtual Data Warehouse
Email Timberline
Technology Feature:
Virtual Data Warehouse
Peter Sigurdson, GeoSpatial Consulting Inc.
GeoSpatial Consulting Inc., a Timberline business partner, has entered into a partnership agreement with the Saskatchewan Forest Centre (SFC) and the Saskatchewan Environment Forest Service Branch to deliver a comprehensive forestry data management system. The Virtual Data Warehouse (VDW) is a web enabled geographic information system (GIS) and data management system. The VDW will provide a central point of access for GIS data and applications and will assist the Forest Service in managing their data and delivering the business processes central to their forest management and monitoring obligations.
The VDW development, on behalf of the Forest Service Branch, will progress over a four-year term. During the first year, core mapping and data management tools will be developed and implemented. During years two through four, applications will be developed that will provide functionality specific to the delivery of core, prioritized business processes of the Forest Service.
The SFC has recently entered into another agreement that will extend the Virtual Data Warehouse to deliver knowledge-based services to the forest, farm, and secondary wood products sector. This includes farmers interested in agroforestry development and the value-added/wood products sector. The objective is to create an online information system that provides the information required for business decision making and implementation of the SFC's technology transfer programs.
During upcoming phases of the VDW Project, it is the intent of the SFC to offer partnership opportunities to other users of GIS data in government agencies and to the private sector. It is expected that through the partnership model, significant benefits can be extended to other resource and land management agencies at costs much less than would be experienced if the agencies were to develop independent systems.
It is the SFC's intent to spread data management and applications development costs across a range of client bases so that economies of scale can be realized. This will result in the VDW applications being the shared property of all partners, with the SFC as the program administrator. Data confidentiality and direct control by the data owners of their information and processes are fundamental concepts of the VDW.
The tools being developed as part of the Virtual Data Warehouse include:
- Data and Metadata Browsing Tools - providing easy access to data and metadata libraries; enabling and maintaining links to tabular databases; and managing standard and customized thematic legends and symbology;
- Data Maintenance Tools - tools to allow the systematic update, archiving, and versioning of geographic and tabular datasets; and tools to facilitate the capture and maintenance of metadata at the feature and dataset level.
- Data Sharing Tools - tools to allow for importing and exporting of data between partners.
- Mapping and Reporting Tools - the development of a mapping system to allow for the creation and sharing of custom map types and template; the ability to save and re-use map types and templates; and the ability to export maps to image formats.
- Analytical Tools - flexible and configurable tools to allow for ad-hoc GIS analysis.
- Investment Attraction Tools - analytical tools designed to help businesses make informed investment decisions, based on relevant forest related information. A supplier and service provider directory and a member bulletin board will be developed.
- Planning Tools and Services - analytical tools to allow farmers to build afforestation plans, including plantation mapping and tracking, silviculture tracking, and plantation/woodlot planning.
- Support Tools - online help and tutorials.
Geospatial Consulting Inc. (formerly GeoSpatial Timberline) is a joint venture between Timberline Forest Inventory Consultants Ltd. and GeoSpatial International Inc. GeoSpatial Consulting's business focus is on forest and natural resources planning and management, and the delivery of GIS and remote sensing applications and services. For more information on GeoSpatial's operating divisions, visit www.geospatial.ca.
Westbank First Nation signs Community Forest Pilot Agreement
David Carson, RPF - Timberline Victoria
The Westbank First Nation recently signed a Community Forest Pilot Agreement with the Province of British Columbia. Timberline has been working within a team of consultants who have prepared the agreement application and documents such as business plans and management plans.
The Victoria office of Timberline was approached by the Westbank First Nation to provide a timber supply analysis to ensure that the candidate agreement area could support the target allowable cut. This was a component of the application process. Inventories and other spatial data were collated and a non-spatial analysis was completed. Once the application was approved, and in support of the management plan, we upgraded the analysis to a spatial one in order to produce an integrated analysis and 20-year plan. This process included automated harvest blocking incorporating the pre-existing approved harvest blocks. The 20-year plan was then used as a starting point for the forest development plan, and staff from the Prince George office of Timberline produced the development plan maps.
The Westbank Community Forest Pilot Agreement area is 45,693 hectares and supports an allowable annual cut of 55,000 cubic metres. It is located in the traditional territory of the Westbank First Nation's people, immediately west of and surrounding the town of Westbank, and across Okanagan Lake from Kelowna - click here to see a map of the area.
The community forest will allow the Westbank First Nation community to participate directly in the benefits associated with the natural resources of their lands. We wish to congratulate the people of the Westbank First Nation on their achievement.
For more information, please contact David Carson at Timberline, Victoria.
In British Columbia, a community forest can be described as any forestry operation managed by a local government, community group, First Nation or community-held corporation for the benefit of the entire community. (source: BC Ministry of Forests Community Forest Pilot Project webpage: http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hth/community/)
http://www.fao.org/gtos/gofc-gold/
Global observation of forest and land cover dynamicshttp://www.eosd.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/resources/images_e.html
Link to the 'Earth Observation for Sustainable Development of Forests' images page, featuring the Canada Landsat Mosiac.http://www.canadianforestry.com/
Hompage for the Canadian Forestry Association.http://www.gisday.com/index.html
November 17, 2004 is International GIS day! Visit the website to find out more.Know of a link that others would be interested in? Email it to our attention.
INFORM announces new TFM Client
The Saskatchewan Forest Centre chooses TheForestManager for harvest planning, silviculture, roads, and agroforestry management.
The Saskatchewan Forest Centre (SFC) in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan has signed on as a licensed user of INFORM's TheForestManagerTM.
The enterprise software product will provide the SFC and its partners with the capability to manage all of the data associated with harvesting, silviculture and forest roads from a central data warehouse. Planners and operational staff will be able to access the geographic information systems (GIS) and tabular data from a central "warehouse" to query, map and analyze for forest planning purposes. This will enable the SFC to deliver knowledge-based services to existing and emerging forest management organizations in central and northern Saskatchewan, farmers interested in agroforestry development, and the value-added and wood products sectors.
Services will include online access to the data, and data updating and maintenance. For example, SFC clients will be able to map the location of woodlots or plantations and track management activities while online.
INFORM Network for Management Systems Limited is a technology company focused on building resource management applications. INFORM is jointly owned by Timberline Forest Inventory Consultants Ltd. and TELUS. TheForestManager is an enterprise forest management system that uses ESRI GIS, Oracle, and Microsoft technology. Government organizations and forest companies across Canada use TheForestManager to manage their woodlands data, planning, and operational forestry requirements.
For more information, please contact Steve Lipscomb at: sel@informgis.com
A Partnership Initiative for Community Economic Benefits
Timberline announces joint venture in Chile
Chris Hermansen - Timberline, Vancouver
Timberline's Chilean subsidiary, Timberline Gestión de Recursos Naturales Limitada, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a joint venture with Sociedad Koyam Limitada, to assist Mapuche landowners in south-central Chile in the reforestation and management of their lands.
Koyam owns and operates a forest nursery near Temuco in Region IX, or Araucanía, of Chile (see coloured region on map, left). This nursery currently grows and sells a range of cultivars, from exotic, fast-growing commercial eucalyptus, Radiata pine, and Douglas-fir, to local species of commercial, aesthetic, and spiritual value. Koyam is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporación de Desarrollo Mapuche Lonko Kilapang, a well-known and respected development NGO (non-governmental organization) that operates to the benefit of a number of comunas in the area. Revenue from Koyam operations are used to support programs in the comunas. A comuna is Chile's smallest political administrative unit; a comuna or group of comunas is administered by a mayor of a municipality.
The Mapuche people are the largest indigenous group in Chile, inhabiting the central and southern zones of the country. There are more than 80,000 Mapuche people who own and occupy land on nearly 3,000 reserves in Regions VIII, IX, and X (Bío Bío, Araucanía, and Los Lagos). These reserves total more than 600,000 hectares. About 40% of these lands were cleared in the past for farming and ranching, are of marginal utility as farmland, and could be recovered as a mixture of exotic and native forest. The supply of logs from small properties is of significant and growing importance to Chilean forest products companies. The growth rates of some of the commonly-used exotic species is such that family-owned farms can see concrete benefit from planting these trees in only a few years.
"Our contact with Timberline Forest Inventory Consultants of Canada has been particularly positive for our Corporation Mapuche Lonko Kilapang of Chile", says Mauricio Huenchulaf, President. "Over time (it) has allowed us to initiate a reciprocal process of cooperation that will result in better services and concrete benefits towards our Mapuche communities - the subject of our work - by incorporating the experience and technical instruments developed by Timberline in the management of natural resources and economic development within indigenous communities of Canada. For that reason we feel very pleased with this relationship and hope to deepen it in the future."
Partnership with Koyam in this venture is a fundamental component of Timberline's business activity and long-term strategy in Latin America.
Photo (from left to right): Andrés Antivil, Mauricio Huenchulaf (Corporación de Desarrollo Mapuche Lonko Kilapang), and Juan Pablo Cerda (Timberline), signing the official documents in Temuco, Chile.
For more information, please contact:
Juan Pablo Cerda
(jpc@timberline.cl, or +56.9.089.8152),
Andrés Antivil
(aantivil@lonkokilapang.cl, or +56.45.402700), or
Chris Hermansen
(clh@timberline.ca, or +1.604.714.2878)For a detailed map including the numbered, administrative regions of Chile, click here.
Lonko Kilapang's (spanish) website can be found at: www.lonkokilapang.cl
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