Inventory and land-use change

• Forest inventory
• Tracking land-use change events

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Forest inventory

Most people can agree that forests include trees. Beyond that, there are many different ideas of what forests are depending on the point of view, past experience and the purpose being addressed.

For reporting under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Government of Canada defines forests as lands having:

• minimum tree crown cover = 25 percent
• minimum land area = 1 hectare
• minimum tree height = 5 metres
• minimum width = 20 metres (distance between trunks)

Also included are lands that have the potential to achieve these thresholds, such as recently burned or harvested areas where new trees have not yet grown to 5 meters in height. Some treed areas in Canada are excluded under this definition. For example sparse open grasslands with the occasional trees; trees planted within roadway medians or urban lots; high elevation or high latitude trees which have limited height.

Canada’s forests fall under a wide spectrum of different management intensities, ranging from tightly managed forest plantations to remote wilderness forests with little or no human access. Under the UNFCCC, Canada must report annually on greenhouse gas emissions and removals from the “managed forest,” which represents a subset of the total forest area in Canada.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (Section 3.1.2.1) defines forest management as “the process of planning and implementing practices for stewardship and use of the forest aimed at fulfilling relevant ecological (including biological diversity), economic and social functions of the forest in a sustainable manner.” The IPCC instructs that the definition of forest management at the national level should be applied consistently over time and cover all forests subject to periodic or ongoing human interventions, including the full range of management practices from commercial timber production to stewardship for non-commercial purposes.

Managed and unmanaged forest lands in Canada

Area of managed forest: 225 million hectares
Area of unmanaged forest: 136 million hectares
Total area of forest: 361 million hectares

Canada has chosen to take an area-based approach to defining the managed forest, whereby a set of criteria are used to define the boundaries within which all forest lands are considered to be part of the managed forest by virtue of the systems of practices in that area (or that have been in that area since 1990). The map shows where these forests are located in Canada.

Sources and information:

• The area of unmanaged forest is calculated as the difference between the managed forest and the total forest as reported in The State of Canada’s Forests: Annual Report 2016.
• Find more Statistical data on Canada’s forests.
• The total areas of managed and unmanaged forest in Canada are included in the National Forest Carbon Monitoring, Accounting, and Reporting System (NFCMARS) for Canada’s 2016 report to the UNFCCC. The area included in this annual reporting process will continue to evolve as new and better forest inventory data are incorporated into the NFCMARS.

For more information, contact Mark Hafer.

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Tracking land-use change events

The National Forest Carbon Monitoring, Accounting, and Reporting System tracks changes in carbon stocks that result from afforestation, reforestation, or deforestation activities in Canada. Under the Kyoto Protocol, Canada is required to monitor changes in carbon stocks that result from afforestation, reforestation, and deforestation activities that have occurred since 1990.

The Deforestation Monitoring Group is ensuring that the methods and databases fit into the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector (CBM-CFS3), and that they are useful for other reporting and analysis requirements.

For more information, contact Andrew Dyk.