Title

Modelled old-growth forest 

Alternate title

MOG 

Purpose

MOG is used in various forest management planning and policy development. All old growth forest must be protected from threatening processes such as timber harvesting activities. Forest Planners across Government and non-Government organisations are encouraged to utilise this new data as part of their risk management plans to protect old growth. For areas of modelled old growth forest that have been mapped outside of the formal Comprehensive, Adequate and Representative (CAR) reserve system; forest management planners will need to confirm in the field the presence and extent of the old growth forest community prior to any forest management activity commencing. 

Supplemental Information

Future Design Issues: Incorporation of LiDAR derived classifications for Central Highlands and East Gippsland RFAs. Related Documents: None 

Status

Completed  

Code

4283 

Maintenance and update frequency

As needed  

Topic category

• Biota
• Farming

Use limitation

. To Identify area of old growth across the state 

Classification

Unclassified  

Statement

Dataset Source: This dataset is an adjusted version of MOG2009. Dataset Originality: Primary & Derived 

Description

Collection Method: SFRI 

Description

Data processing steps: The process of deriving the disturbance adjusted MOG is described below. Spatial datasets used in this analysis 1. Fire disturbance dataset FIRE.HISTORY Custodian: DELWP 2. Timber Harvesting disturbance dataset LASTLOG25 Custodian: DEDJTR 3. Modelled Old Growth Extent - MOG2009. Custodian: DELWP 4. Old Growth extent (West of State) - OG100. Custodian: DELWP 5. Outputs from Google Earth Engine ¿ Fire Severity tools. Custodian: DELWP Notes: all output of this analysis was in the GDA_1994_VICGRID94 coordinate system. XY Tolerances of each process in this exercise was set to 0.001 meters. Benchmarking a statewide MOG2009 The MOG2009 dataset has an extent that is only in the east of the Victoria, not including stands of Old Growth in the West Regional Forest Agreement boundary area. The Old Growth in the West RFA is represented in the OG100 layer, which represents the extent of Old Growth as at approximately the year 2000. This layer was benchmarked to 2009 to make it consistent with MOG2009 in the east of the State. The method used follows that described below to produce MOG, however only applied to the West RFA and the OG100 layer, removing high intensity and severity disturbances that impacted OG100 between the year 2000 and June 2009. Once these impacted old growth stands were determined, they were removed and a Statewide MOG2009 was used for further analysis. Selection of fire disturbances Two different sources of fire severity were utilised to determine the impacts on modelled old growth for the majority of the state, the FIRE.HISTORY dataset provided severity impacts of both planned and unplanned fires. For the west of the state, a combination of the FIRE.HISTORY dataset and estimates of fire severity from Google Earth Engine were utilised to build a complete dataset. Once this was compiled, fire events of any type (burn, bushfire or unknown) were selected with a Start Date between the 01/07/2008 and 30/06/2018. Once these were selected, high severity fires were selected. These were defined where severity was of the following classes: BURNT_1 Impacted (High severity crown burnt, partial to complete crown burnt) BURNT_2 Impacted (High-Moderate crown scorch) BURNT_2F Impacted (High severity crown scorch, 60-100% crown scorch) All other severity classes (eg, low severity crown scorch) were considered to represent negligible impact to old growth status. Selection of timber harvesting events Timber harvesting events of any type (silvicultural method and in any forest type) were selected with an End Date (ENDDATE) between the 01/07/2008 and 01/07/2017. Once these were selected, high intensity timber harvesting events were selected. These were defined where the silvicultural system was of the following categories: CFE/CFS Impacted (Clear-felling / Clear-felling Salvage) RDC/RDI Impacted (Roadline Construction / Improvement) STR Impacted (Seed-tree) THA/THB Impacted (Thinning from above/below) GSE Impacted (Group Selection) UNE Impacted (Uneven-aged management) Unlogged areas (UNL) and Single Tree Selection (STS) were the only silvicultural records that were assumed to have negligible impact on old growth status. Once these two layers were created, they were unioned in to one layer that represented all disturbance events. Where these high severity or intensity disturbances impacted modelled old growth, the old growth status of the stand was removed, which allowed the generation of a revised MOG layer current to June 2018. 

Classification

Unclassified  

Attribute Quality

Positional Accuracy

Conceptual Consistency

Missing Data

Comments

Modelled old-growth for Victorian extent Completeness Verification: No field validation has been undertaken on this dataset. 

Excess Data