GIS Helps Green the Emerald IsleEmployees of the Irish Forestry Board, or Coillte Teoranta as it is commonly known, may not be within hearing distance for every falling tree in the forest, but you can be certain that even with management area sizes as small as 0.2 hectares, they can tell you its species, location, and ultimate use. Unfortunately, this careful stewardship of the nation's forests has not always been the case. While early inhabitants of Ireland enjoyed vast forests of oak, elm, ash, and pine, climatic deterioration, beginning around 3,000 B.C., induced bog development and caused a decline in these forested areas. Other forests were later cleared for building materials and agricultural use. Deforestation increased after the Norman invasion in the twelfth century and only 12 percent forest cover remained by the year 1600. Widespread felling continued in order to supply the English market. This timber, especially the oak, was in great demand for construction and shipbuilding. Early in the eighteenth century, forests in Ireland had become so depleted that the country was forced to import timber. Some attempts were made to reverse the destruction of the forests, and in 1741 the Dublin Society offered grants for tree planting. Tree clearance continued, however, and woodland cover was reduced to less than 1 percent by the early 1900s. A national afforestation program was introduced shortly after independence in 1922, and this heralded the development of modern Irish commercial forestry. Through various afforestation schemes and careful management, the forested area of the country had increased to 8 percent by 1998. Today, 80 percent of the forest area in Ireland is under public ownership, reflecting the dominant role of the State in this sector. In 1986, Coillte, then the Irish Forest Service, purchased Esri's ArcInfo software, making it among the first users of a commercial GIS in Europe. In 1989, Coillte was formed as a commercial entity responsible for the management of State forests and the use of GIS for forest management, and inventory continued to increase. The original objective of Coillte's GIS was to facilitate continuous inventory and mapping of the forest estate. As GIS applications have grown, however, it has become a key component in the management of the timber resource, providing important decision support at both the strategic and operational levels. The core GIS system includes a variety of software products from Esri including ArcView GIS, ArcInfo 8, and PC ARC/INFO. Extension products include ArcView 3D Analyst, ArcView Spatial Analyst, ArcView Network Analyst, and ArcPress. Attribute data collected by Coillte includes land use and mixture type, species, planting year, yield class, area of stand, top height, spacing, and the number of stems per hectare. Boundaries are digitized from Ordnance Survey maps and compiled from field survey. Data acquisition is performed in the field using handheld devices. Building on their progressive approach to GIS technologies, Coillte has begun the implementation of an exciting new development that should see the company become one of the demonstration. Comments Gary Williamson, systems implementation team leader at Coillte, "We are in the process of moving from our legacy management information system (MIS) architecture into an Intranet-enabled, browser-based enterprise GIS/MIS. This will allow us to make our inventory data available to everyone in the company, rather than just a select few, with full integration of our MIS and GIS applications." Users will be able to query the MIS database and get the answer in GIS map format rather than just the normal tabular printout. This will empower them by adding an extra geographic dimension, enabling the manager to plan more effectively. This strategy involves using ArcIMS as the map brokerage technology within a multi-server/computer architecture. Online spatial data update and editing applications will be provided within a Web browser, and ArcPad will be used for collecting data in the field before uploading it to the master database. With the new enterprise system, Coillte staff will use GIS functionality for applications as diverse as land valuation, timber market analysis, harvest route planning, and landscape visualization, to name but a few. This is a significant development beyond the traditional GIS operations of data entry, analysis, and map production. In addition to managing its forests for commercial use, the recent implementation of a new sustainable forest management initiative by Coillte has resulted in a greater emphasis on biodiversity. This involves adopting a more holistic approach to forest management, taking into account social, ecological, and economic implications. For more information, contact Gary Williamson (e-mail: gary.williamson@coillte.ie). |
