Hazard Assessment Keys For Evaluating Site Sensitivity To Soil Degrading Processes Guidebook

This guidebook is intended to help forest managers assess and minimize the effect on the soil of any proposed soil-degrading forest practices involving compaction and puddling, soil displacement, forest floor displacement, surface soil erosion, and mass wasting. The guidebook rates hazards as low, moderate, high, and very high. The guidebook includes definitions, controlling site factors, management considerations, and keys to help rate those hazards. An appendix contains a listing of precipitation factors for biogeoclimatic zones of British Columbia by forest region.

Provides direction on how to prepare operational plans and prescriptions that require specification of limits for various types of soil disturbance during forestry operations.

Sitka spruce, the largest of the world's spruces, is an important component of British Columbia's coastal forests. Its ecology gives it a special place in the sustainable management of the province's forests. However, in west coast forestry it is poorly known in comparison with its main coniferous companions -- Douglas-fir, western redcedar, and western hemlock. As an important international forestry resource, it is crucial that Sitka spruce -- its ecology and the ecosystems in which it occurs -- be clearly understood by those who are involved with its management.

This guide is a technical support document intended to help forestry practitioners collect the information they need to prepare a silvicultural treatment regime and silviculture prescription in accordance with British Columbia Forest Practices Code legislation. It deals primarily with the collection & stratification of site-specific field data. After information on office preparation, stratification, plot establishment, and mapping procedures, the guide presents data collection procedures for silviculture prescription field forms. Copies of forms are included in the appendix. The data cover such matters as site characteristics, understorey & overstorey, soils, riparian & watershed values, soil & fire hazards, silvicultural systems & objectives, harvesting, forest health, stand tending, and forest resource values.