Land use allocation in central British Columbia: A case study

Land allocation use specialization is a forest management strategy designed to accommodate the wide array of values present on the forested landscape, having the potential to enhance both environmental and industrial uses of the forest. The details of such a strategy, however, are not fixed, being case specific. The challenge is to define the basis for zoning considering the multiplicity of values expected from each particular forestland base. Therefore, this work explores the implications of different zoning approaches for land allocation in the Prince George Forest District of central British Columbia, Canada. To do so, three objectives were set: a) evaluate the consequences of different zoning strategies on a specific forestland base; b) examine the effects of different area proportions among categories on the land use allocation; and c) explore how expected future climate change may affect land use allocation in the study area. The methodology consisted of defining the basic values expected by stakeholders from the forest land base and combining them using three different zoning approaches: three-zone, four-zone and multiple-zone. Results show that the zoning approach has major influences on the results, increasing spatial distribution and fragmentation with an increase in the number of zones. Furthermore, the increase in target area of a specific category results in its greater distribution over the landscape and better representation of the variety of landscapes found in the study area. Finally, climate change predictions can be proactively incorporated in land use plans, creating more robust land use plans. The methodology employed in this work enables the amalgamation of multiple sources of information to define forest values, it is flexible and it also provides spatially explicit allocation maps easy to assimilate.;Keywords: zoning, triad, climate change, land use plans.