Forest Index Description

The following description provides an overview of the various Forest Value Indices that were used to develop the

composite Rank for each unique property parcel within the study area. In all cases, individual indices were

calculated as a raster with a resolution of 20m. The ranking of each index at a parcel level is provided.

PID

Premises Identification Number which uniquely identifies individual properties within Nova Scotia.

Rank

The overall Forest Value Index Rank is based on the 19 Forest Indices described below. All private and

corporately owned properties within the project area were ranked from 1 to 10, with 1 being the highest rank

and 10 being the lowest.

Ha

The size of parcel in hectares.

Recent Harvest

Recent harvest areas derived from aerial Lidar based canopy height models. Individual parcels have been ranked

based on:

Mature

Forest stands considered to be mature based on height land capability relationships and ranked as follows:

Forest Density

Crown density derived from aerial Lidar based canopy height models. Resultant 20m resolution raster values

have been classified for each parcel based on:

Forest Structure

Forest structure from aerial Lidar based canopy height models using a Terrain Ruggedness Index. The greater

the height variation of the forest canopy, the greater the Terrain Rugged Index value. The resultant 20 m raster

values were evaluated for each parcel based on the following:

Forest Productivity

The forest productivity was extracted from the FID base. Each parcel was assessed and the median value was

classified based on the following:

Wetland

Wetlands were extracted from the FID database and a binary raster layer was generated for the study area.

Individual land parcels were classified using the following criteria:

Forested

Forested areas within the database were extracted from the FID. A binary raster layer was subsequently

generated and the following ranking scheme was applied to each parcel:

Past Management

The Nova Scotia Provincial Silviculture Database was used to determine if active forest management had been

completed in the past. Each of the individual parcels were evaluated and if there was some activity on the parcel

it was ranked as 1 (see below):

Paved Road Density

Paved road density was calculated from the Nova Scotia Topographic Database. Paved roads were extracted

from the database and total road length per square km was calculated for a 1 km by 1 km grid for the study area.

Each parcel was evaluated to determine if it was located in a grid cell with a paved road density greater than 0.

The following ranking scheme was then applied to each parcel:

Unpaved Road Density

Unpaved road density was calculated using the same approach as the paved road density as described above

and the following classification was applied to each parcel:

Indicator Species

A Canada Warbler habitat model was developed using the provincial Lidar based canopy height model (CHM), a

Lidar based shrub density layer developed by the Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Center and the provincial

wet areas mapping database. The following parameters were used to identify areas were all four parameters

intersect:

The resultant raster was used to assessed each parcel to determine the amount of modeled habitat that

occurred. A rank was assigned to based on the following criteria:

Invasive Species

Invasive forest pests identified by Canadian Food Inspection Agency through formal infested place orders have

been mapped across the study area. The list of pests include:

• Brown Spruce Long Horn Beetle (Tetropium fuscum)

• Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis)

• Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (Adelges tsugae (Annand)

As infested place orders are province wide for Brown Spruce Long Horn Beetle and Emerald Ash Borer, the

existing restrictions for Hemlock Woolly Adelgid were the only ones used for the analysis. The classification was

based on the following:

Connect

Habitat connectivity was modeled using proximity to water and patches of forest land that are removed from

roads. The provincial topographic database was used to create a 100 m buffer along streams, rivers, and lakes

that contain visible water. All roads from the same database were used to locate patches of forest land that were

further than 500m from roads.

The resulting data were used to assess individual parcels based on the following criteria:

Protection

Protection was modeled as the distance to existing parks, protected areas, conservation lands and properties

with conservation easements.

The mean parcel distance to the closest protected area was used as the criteria to rank this index component as

shown below:

SAR Species

An existing SAR database developed by the Nature Conservancy of Canada was updated with the current Critical

Habitat for Species at Risk maintained by Environment and Climate Change Canada. The existence of SAR

habitat or known populations have been classified into the following groups:

• Atlantic Coastal Plain Flora

• Bird

• Reptile

• Lichen

• Bats

• Vascular plants

The presence of each of these groups on a parcel level were used to develop a rank based on the following

schema:

Other

An existing database developed by the Nature Conservancy of Canada was used to identify other values of

conservation concern. The database was updated using the Critical Habitat for Species at Risk database (ECCC).

The following parcel level classifications were included in this Forest Value item:

• Shorebirds

• Older forested wetland

• Older forest

• Salt Marsh

• Intact Floodplain

• Calcareous habitat

• Near urban

• Critical Holdings

Intact Forest

Intact forest was determined by selecting all the clumps of forest with a canopy height greater than 10 m in

height that had a contiguous area greater than 10 ha in size.

The following ranking scheme was applied to each parcel within the study area:

Size by Watershed

Parcel statistics within each of the sub watersheds were calculated. Parcels that exceeded the mean parcel size

plus 1 standard deviation where selected as the largest parcels within the respective sub-watershed.

Resiliency

Terrestrial Resiliency as classified by the Nature Conservancy. Sites classified as least and less resilient were

selected from the original TNC database. Individual parcels were given a rank of 1 if more than 5% of the parcel

area contained these low resiliency sites.