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Forest Inventory

Defining Canada’s Managed Forest

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 Convention on Climate Change, the Government of Canada defines forests as having the potential to achieve:

This definition includes 310 Mha. 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 LULUCF (Land Use and Land Use Change in 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.

Figure 1 Managed and unmanaged forest lands in Canada
Figure 1. Managed and unmanaged forest lands in Canada.

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).  Figure 1 (Managed and unmanaged forest lands in Canada) shows where these forests are located in Canada.  Table 1 reports the total areas of managed and unmanaged forest in Canada included in the NFCMARS for Canada’s 2007 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.

Table 1. Managed and Unmanaged Forest Land Areas in Canada.

Area of managed forest
(millions of ha)

Area of unmanaged forest* (millions of ha)

Total area of forest
(millions of ha)

230

80

310

* Calculated as the difference between the managed forest (as reported in this table) and the total forest as reported in CanFI 2001 (310 million ha) (Power and Gillis 2006).

Fore more information, contact: Graham Stinson