National Forest Estate Subcompartments GB
FCPRODUCT.GB_NFE_WOODLANDS_2019
All organisations hold information about the core of their business. The Forestry Commission holds information on trees and forests. We use this information to help us run our business and make decisions. The role of the Forest Inventory (the Sub-compartment Database (SCDB) and the stock maps) is to be our authoritative data source, giving us information for recording, monitoring, analysis and reporting. Through this it supports decision-making on the whole of the FC estate. Information from the Inventory is used by the FC, wider government, industry and the public for economic, environmental and social forest-related decision-making. Furthermore, it supports forestrelated national policy development and government initiatives, and helps us meet our national and international forest-related reporting responsibilities. Information on our current forest resource, and the future expansion and availability of wood products from our forests, is vital for planners both in and outside the FC. It is used when looking at the development of processing industries, regional infrastructure, the effect upon communities of our actions, and to prepare and monitor government policies. The Inventory (SCDB and stock maps), with ‘Future Forest Structure’ and the ‘rollback’ functionality of Forester, will help provide a definitive measure of trends in extent, structure, composition, health, status, use, and management of all FC land holdings. We require this to meet national and international commitments, to report on the sustainable management of forests as well as to help us through the process of business and Forest Design Planning. As well as helping with the above, the SCDB helps us address detailed requests from industry, government, non-government organisations and the public for information on our estate. The FC’s growing national and international responsibilities and the requirements for monitoring and reporting on a range of forest statistics have highlighted the technical challenges we face in providing consistent, national level data. A well kept and managed SCDB and GIS (Geographical Information System - Forester) will provide the best solution for this and assist Countries in evidence-based policy making. Looking ahead at international reporting commitments; one example of an area where requirements look set to increase will be reporting on our work to combat climate change and how our estate contributes to carbon sequestration. We have put in place processes to ensure that at least the basics of our inventory are covered: 1. The inventory of forests; 2. The land-uses; 3. The land we own ( Deeds); 4. The roads we manage. We depend on others to allow us to manage the forests and to provide us with funds and in doing so we need to be seen to be responsible and accountable for our actions. A foundation of achieving this is good record keeping. A sub compartment should be recognisable on the ground. It will be similar enough in land use, species or habitat composition, yield class, age, condition, thinning history etc. to be treated as a single unit. They will generally be contiguous in nature and will not be split by roads, rivers, open space etc. Distinct boundaries are required, and these will often change as crops are felled, thinned, replanted and resurveyed. In some parts of the country foresters used historical and topographical features to delineate sub-compartment boundaries, such as hedges, walls and escarpments. In other areas no account of the history and topography of the site was taken, with field boundaries, hedges, walls, streams etc. being subsumed into the sub-compartment. Also, these features may or may not appear on the OS backdrop, again this was dependent on the staff involved and what they felt was relevant to the map. The main point is that, as managers we may find such obvious features in the middle of a sub-compartment when nothing is indicated on the stock map, while the same thing would be indicated elsewhere. Attributes; FOREST Cost centre Nos. COMPARTMNT Compartemnt Nos. SUBCOMPT Sub-compartment letter SUBCOMPTID Unique identifier BLOCK Block nos. CULTIVATN PRILANDUSE Land Use of primary component PRISPECIES Primary component tree species PRIPLANTYR prim. component year planted PRIPCTAREA Prim. component %Area of sub-compartment SECLANDUSE Land Use of secondary component SECSPECIES Secondary component tree species SECPLANTYR Secondary component year planted SECPCTAREA Secondary component %Area of sub-compartment TERLANDUSE Land Use of tertiary component TERSPECIES Tertiary component tree species TERPLANTYR Tertiary component year planted TERPCTAREA Tertiary component %Area of sub-compartment CULTIVATN An indication of the way the sub-compartment has been prepared for establishment. PRIHABITAT Primary component UK Biodiversity Action Plan (UKBAP) Broad and Priority Habitats. SECHABITAT Secondary component UK Biodiversity Action Plan (UKBAP) Broad and Priority Habitats. TERHABITAT Tertiary component UK Biodiversity Action Plan (UKBAP) Broad and Priority Habitats.
dataset
protocol: OGC:WMS-1.1.1-http-get-map
name: 2
description: National Forest Estate Subcompartments GB
FCPRODUCT.GB_NFE_WOODLANDS_2019
eng
EPSG
OSGB 1936 / British National Grid (EPSG:27700)
farming
biota
economy
environment
Forest Management
Planning
Environment
Felling
Landscape
Woodland
Ownership
Land use
Utility and governmental services
publication
2008-06-01
forest management
publication
2010-01-13
-8.8
-0.71
60.87
54.63
publication
2007-12-13
GB-SCT
creation
2010-03-31
revision
2019-03-31
annually
The Sub-Compartment Database (SCDB) is a physical description of the land that the FC manages on behalf of the public. As its name implies it was originally a database of individual site or sub-compartment records which contained both crop and site information. As the forest is the core asset that the FC is charged to manage and the SCDB is the core information on that asset, it helps us manage that asset effectively and is therefore very important. The SCDB is in effect the hub of sustainable forest management and we should not underestimate its importance. The SCDB is not just about trees however, 70% of the land that we manage is of a forest nature, yet 30% by definition is not. This non-forest land covers, farmland, open mountaintops, heathland, estuarine and riparian habitats. View the SCDB not only as a ‘tree thing’, but also as a land management tool. Keeping site or stand records (today’s sub-compartments) began shortly after the Commission was formed. 1. In the early 1920s paper records were created and stored as the inventory. 2. There was also a paper tape era, and the time when the SCDB and production forecast were hosted by the University of London Computing Centre. 3. To help query and manage these individual records, they were converted to punch cards in the 1950s and 1960s. 4. In 1974 a decision was taken to migrate these individual records into an electronic database in anticipation of the 1977 Quinquennial Forecast. This greatly helped interrogation of the inventory data. 5. To further this electronic management of the inventory data it was moved into a Rapport database in the late 1970s / early 1980s and then converted into an Oracle database environment in the late 1980s. Throughout this evolution there was never a direct link between the SCDB and the maps. However, the maps and SCDB were kept in parallel through manual checks and procedures. In 1999 both the maps and SCDB were linked in Forester GIS, ensuring that both parts of the data matched and ‘said the same thing’ for the first time. SUB COMPARTMENTS; Ideally, the area bounded by a sub-compartment should be uniform in terms of: 1. Species; 2. Relative mix of tree species; 3. Relative mix of tree age classes; 4. Presence/absence of distinct storeys; 5. Spatial distribution of trees; 6. Yield class (for each species/component); 7. Habitat type. Forester GIS ensures that a minimum sub-compartment size of 0.5 ha is observed. This is the rule that was in the old Survey Handbook. However, as there was no way of measuring and monitoring this in the paper maps, a lot of smaller sub-compartments slipped through the ‘paper’ net. This occurred more in some FDs than others. Many of these were cleaned out (if erroneous)\\nor converted to components in 1999 as part of the conversion to GIS. However, for some FDs the minimum mappable unit or sub-compartment size threshold rule was lowered within Forester to allow these smaller subcompartments to exist. Approximately 10% of all subcompartments as of 31/03/05 are under 0.5ha in size. We recommend that sub-compartments are no smaller than a minimum of 0.5ha. However, for a building or residence, a minimum of 0.1 ha is acceptable. Most sub-compartments have areas between 1ha and 12 ha. The largest sub-compartment is currently 4,542.1 ha and has a land use code of Open. As broad habitats are mapped, most of these larger subcompartments will disappear as they are broken down into their separate habitats. This is because habitats form part of the sub-compartment / component and offer a higher resolution than the land use classifications. Before 1999, if a sub-compartment was spread over several discrete smaller areas, then areas of 0.1 ha were allowed, as long as they totalled to 0.5ha. Since 1999 individual areas like this had to equate to the minimum FD sub-compartment polygon size or the minimum mappable unit. Sub-compartment area is generated automatically from the mapped area. Forester also ensures that the total area of sub-compartments agrees with the area of the compartment in which they are located. The largest element will contain the full labelling and single letters are then allocated by the system to denote each smaller specific element of the sub-compartment. Processes such as ‘cookie cutting’ for the Production Forecast will round sub-compartment area to the nearest 0.1 ha. Reports taken directly from the SCDB generally calculate the area in square metres and round the result to the nearest 0.1ha. Sub-compartment data is used for a range of applications and is important to us for a number of reasons: 1. In Forester GIS they provide the basic map showing where forests are. 2. SCDB data provides the description and the record of ‘what is actually on the ground’, i.e. what stands consist of and what stage of development they have reached. 3. SCDB data is used for a range of important business applications like Production Forecasting (PF) see Operational Guidance Booklet 32.
ESRI Shapefile
1.0
No limitations on public access
Please ensure that the following acknowledgement is displayed on any hard copy: Reproduced by Permission of Ordnance Survey on behalf of HMSO. © Crown copyright and database right [year]. Ordnance Survey Licence number 100021242.
Spatial Data Manager
Forest Research
IFOS, Silvan House, 231 Corstorphine Road
Edinburgh
EH12 7AT
United Kingdom
mapping.geodata@forestry.gsi.gov.uk
publisher
GIS Manager, England IT
Forestry Commission
620 Bristol Business Park, Coldharbour Lane
Bristol
BS16 1EJ
United Kingdom
custodian
GIS Support Team Leader
Forest Enterprise Scotland
custodian
Spatial Data Manager
Forest Research
IFOS, Silvan House, 231 Corstorphine Road
Edinburgh
EH12 7AT
United Kingdom
mapping.geodata@forestry.gsi.gov.uk
pointOfContact
2020-07-08