Agenda and Minutes for Resource Stewardship Monitoring Pilots
June 29, 2004, 1:30 – 3:10 pm
Agenda:
Tentative list of participants:
Kevin Kilpatrick, Kalum District
Jeff Burrows, Prince George District
John Ingram -- Campbell River District
Len Leroux -- Chilliwack District
Mike Grainger -- North Coast District
Shane Schofield – Chilcotin District
Paul Chalifour/Simon Brookes – Rocky Mountain House District
Shannon Berch and Peter Tschaplinski (Research Branch)
Richard Thompson (WLAP)
Mike Curran (Southern Interior Forest Region)
Ken Soneff (Southern Interior Forest Region)
Denis Collins (Coastal Forest Region)
Dave Wilford (Northern Interior Forest Region)
Nancy Densmore, Frank Barber and Peter Bradford (Forest Practices Branch)
Notes on list of participants:
 Additions from SIFR by end of week
 At this time three districts from the Coast Forest Region will participate on call –
team will need to decide on the number of participating districts per region.
Meeting Objectives:
To introduce the RSMP Team to each other and provide an initial opportunity for review
and input of the pilot objectives, timelines and workplan.
Draft Agenda:
Time
1:30 – 1:45
1:45 – 2:30
2:30 – 3:15
3:15 – 3:45
3:45 – 4:00
Topic
Introductions
Pilot overview and objectives
Checklist status, training (start/end dates for development and delivery),
quality assurance, district participation in checklist refinement Decision
Points:
 Confirm districts that will participate in pilots.
 Confirm which checklists to be tested in which districts
 Other
Workplan (including district milestones),
Next steps, review of decisions and action items
Minutes from Meeting
Attendees: Denis Collins, Shane Schofield, Mike Curran, Paul Chalifour, Simon
Brookes, Shannon Berch, Nancy Densmore, Jeff Burrows, Peter Bradford, Richard
Thompson, Frank Barber, John Ingram, Lisa Hannah, Peter Tschaplinski.
1. Introductions:
(Please send Frank Barber corrections if your intro is incorrect)
Peter Tschaplinski – Research Branch, Victoria. Fish/habitat specialist. Recent work
developing effectiveness evaluations (EE) for the Forest Practices Code Fish/water values
on S4 streams. Developed routine and extensive indicators for FRPA Resource
Evaluation Program (FREP) and Resource Stewardship Monitoring (RSM) Program
Nancy Densmore – Forest Practices Branch. Stand level biodiversity work.
Development of stand level biodiversity indicators for testing this field season
Richard Thompson – WLAP - . Stand level biodiversity work. Development of stand
level biodiversity indicators for testing this field season
Mike Curran – Research Soils Scientist for Southern Interior Forest Region. Soils Value
Team Leader responsible for the development of the soils indicators
Shannon Berch – Research Branch – Soils Biologist/Convervation. Developed soils
indicators that were tested by the Forest Practices Board
Denis Collins—Coastal Forest Region – Research Manager. Member of FRPA Resource
Evaluation Working Group (FREWG) and the Business Area (BA) 2 team for the Coast
Forest Region.
Shane Schofield – Chilcotin District – Stewardship Forester. Industry and MoF field
experience. Brings district perspective to testing
Paul Chalifour – Rocky Mountain House District – Stewardship Forester. Conducted
silviculture audits and brings district perspective to testing
Simon Brookes – Rocky Mountain House District – Earth Scientist – trained staff for
Mackenzie soils audits, trail impacts and harvest regimes
Jeff Burrows – Prince George District – Stewardship Forester – Implementation of
LRMPs for P. George TSA and assisted Canfor in CSA certification process (sustainable
indicators)
John Ingram – Campbell R. District – Tenures Officer – Compliance. Brings district
perspective to testing
Lisa Hannah – Ops. Manager, Kalum District – standing in for Kevin Kilpatrick. –
Implementation of LRMPs and brings operational experience perspective to testing
2. Pilot overview and objectives
Peter Bradford gave a quick overview of the FRPA Resource Evaluation Program and its
two main components: Effectiveness Evaluations and the Resource Stewardship
Monitoring Program.
ACTION: The powerpoint presentation on FREP will be sent out on Wednesday
afternoon (June 30, 2004).
ACTION: Send out the FREP web site address and the MoFs FTP site address
Web site: http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/eefinder
FTP site address:
http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/ftp/HFP/gov_internal/!publish/FRPA%20Evaluation%20Progra
m/
3. Checklist status, training, quality assurance, district
participation
Peter Tschaplinksi – Riparian indicators (currently developing or has developed 2 sets of
indicators – routine and extensive)
- the routine stream channel/riparian indicators are about 99% complete
- test sites in Canfor’s TFL 37
- 4 teams tested the indicators with high degree of consistency
- routine indicator contains 14 questions with sub-questions
- main contractor Derek Tripp
- district level training – within the next 3-4 weeks Peter/Derek can put on field
training of the routine indicators (riparian) for district staff
ACTION: Pilot district field staff (and others on the RSM Program Pilot Team) wanting
to be involved in the riparian routine indicators training to send their names to Peter
Bradford or Frank Barber by next Friday (July 9, 2004).
Mike Curran – Soils indicators (routine)
- the soils indicators checklists is about 95% complete
- local testing in various regions - further refinement after first training session
- will do training in each pilot district – Rick Trowbridge to assist in training
- Simon Brookes could assist in training as schedule permits
- Chuck Rowan comment re “quite technical for field staff” was discussed – possible
solution having a recon checklist followed by more indepth monitoring at specific
points (e.g. more diagnostic as on page 8 of checklist)
ACTION: a copy of 2 of the checklists (riparian, stand level biodiversity) will be sent
out to the team by next Tuesday, July 6, 2004, along with these minutes.
Richard Thompson/Nancy Densmore – stand level biodiversity routine indicators
-
the Forest Practices Board was interested in having stand level biodiversity indicators
so a shortened version of these indicators were developed and field tested.
- These indicators have been field tested, reviewed, revised and will be field-tested
again on June 30, 2004.
- The intent is to clean up and simplify the field form to make it more operationally
friendly/useful
- Training not considered at this point. A contractor for training will have to be
identified
- Field training could link more with soils as there is overlap between soils and stand
level biodiversity (coarse woody debris, green tree retention, undisturbed forest soils,
etc)
ACTION: Richard/Nancy to identify overlaps between soils and stand level biodiversity
to avoid duplication
ACTION: who is willing to field test the stand level biodiversity indicators? Send
names to Frank Barber or Peter Bradford by Wednesday, July 7, 2004.
ACTION: Each pilot district, once they have seen the checklists, to decide on what
routine indicator (soils, riparian, stand level biodiversity) checklists they want to test
within their district.
Sample times to conduct the 3 checklists were roughly:
Riparian – 1:15 – 1:40 minutes per site – 3-4 sites per day
Soils – 2+ hours per site as a minimum
Stand level biodiversity – depends on the retention on site…can be very short if no
retention
What Resource Value Team Leaders (RVTLs) are looking for from field testing
indicators in pilot districts:
- how easy are they to implement by field staff
- how useful these checklists are to get useful data to do reasonable analysis of status of
resource value on site
- how consistent are the results from different groups testing the checklists
- how much time do they take under operational conditions
Note: A cautionary note that the pilots will take more upfront time to work through the
checklists.
Recommendation: It was suggested that overview photos of sites be acquired and
reviewed prior to going into the field.
4. Work Plan
Peter Bradford briefly introduced the Work Plan
Objectives - have draft objectives for RSM Program.
ACTION: Pilot district staff to review “draft” objectives and provide feedback
(confirm/revise objectives) on these objectives for the RSM Program
Site Selection – site selection to conduct monitoring is very important. Need access to
Forest Stewardship Plans (FSPs) to know what/where monitoring is required. The
challenge of site selection is to acquire the necessary information to be able to stratify
properly. Wendy Bergerud has a paper on the importance of randomly selecting sites to
monitor.
ACTION: Send out Wendy Bergerud’s paper on random site selection
Three sections in the Work Plan were highlighted and discussed
Section 1.2 – Draft of Work Plan available to Pilot Team
ACTION: Changes to Workplan – modify objectives to workplan; also add objectives
for RSM Monitoring; and lastly, change date in 11.1 to August 15
ACTION: RSM Program Pilot team to endorse Work Plan . Team to review work plan
by next Friday, July 9, 2004. Endorsement decision at next conference call on July 13,
2004.
Section 6.2 – Wendy’s extension note
Section 10.1 – begin data collection by August 15th, ending roughly Nov 30th depending
on field conditions. Analysis of field data done by Dec 31, 2004
Hand-held computers
Frank discussed the issue of hand-held data collection devices. As per the hand-held,
GPS, blue-tooth software, memory chip and software used in the Range evaluation, a
request was made to Information Management Group (IMG) to get cost estimates and to
acquire (at their cost) 10 packages for field testing this season.
There are pros and cons of using electronic data collection devices; mainly the lack of
ability to make comments in the field
ACTION: update team when IMG has completed task
Next Meeting -
July 13, 2004, 1:30 – 4:00 pm
For staff in Victoria – meeting room will be on the 9th floor, 727 Fisgard St, the
Douglas-Fir meeting room (please try to attend meeting as lines are very limited and we
may have more district staff on the next call)
Dial in information:
Dial in information:
Chair (Peter Bradford): 250-952-6060
Participants:
250-952-6011
Pass code for everyone is
1818#