Cadastral Forestry - A New Approach to Managing Forestry GIS Data

C. Neese

Orbis GIS Inc., Charlotte, NC

Geographic information systems (GIS) have become an integral part of many natural resource organizations. The use of these systems throughout the forest industry for a variety of managerial tasks has resulted in a growing concern about the accuracy of the spatial databases used in making these decisions. The purpose of this paper will be to explore the issue of spatial data accuracy. In particular, the paper will concentrate on introducing and discussing a new concept to forestry GIS data, Cadastral Forestry. For years, cadastral mapping and the higher GIS accuracy standards associated with cadastral data have been linked almost exclusively with municipal or urban GIS data sets. This is no longer the case. This paper will describe how techniques often used to create and maintain “municipal” GIS data sets are being incorporated into forestry spatial data. Examples will be provided that demonstrate the impact of how these techniques are providing increased accuracies to forestry GIS data and how these more accurate GIS data sets are having a positive impact on the management decisions generated from these data.

Keywords: Cadastral, Imagery Accuracy, GIS, Forestry, Data Management, Data Creation

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