The Revelstoke Predictive Ecosystem Mapping (PEM) project area covers nearly 600,000 ha of widely varying terrain in the Revelstoke Timber Supply Area, British Columbia, Canada. This area encompasses the Mount Revelstoke National Park as well as other Provincial Parks. The primary purpose for the PEM maps and Seral Stage maps is for development of wildlife habitat maps focusing on the Mountain Caribou herds (mountain ecotype of woodland caribou Rangifer tarandus caribou). A new hypothesis presented by Parks Canada is that young forest stands in preferred habitats have been impediments to the movement of the caribou. In order to test this hypothesis, we created an ecosystem map that identifies the preferred habitat for caribou, as well as seral stage maps that identify the age of the stands located on these habitat sites.
These maps will be used by Biologists to model caribou habitat in 1985 and 2005 in order to determine if and where the habitat deteriorations are occurring. With this information, forest management strategies can be devised to help increase the size of the endangered Mountain Caribou herds once again.
A secondary use of the PEM map is for timber supply analysis and forest management planning. The PEM map provides valuable information about the distribution of ecosystem units across the land base to enable the management of both timber and non-timber values.
Support for this project by the Revelstoke Community Forest Corporation and the Ministry of Forests BC Timber Sales, benefits both organizations in timber supply analyses and landscape unit planning.This Level 1 PEM produced spatially explicit polygons down to 0.5 ha in size. Each site series is shown on the map.
Silvatech has completed over 4 million ha of PEM mapping in BC, Alberta, Ontario and the Yukon, Canada.
