Bc Cutblocks Gis Download Data: Dataset Structure and Field Coverage

Spatial resources embed their own data dictionaries: resources[].details[].column_name sits beside column_comments carrying each column's official definition, so HARVEST_START_DATE, OPENING_ID and SILV_BASE_CODE arrive already documented. That matters once large extracts land - individual layers run from thousands to millions of features, and guessing field semantics is how cutblock joins go wrong.

No other cataloged source draws BC harvest boundaries. WRI's Global Nature Watch (formerly Global Forest Watch) Open Data Portal exposes 382 catalogued datasets - 360 downloadable - including umd_tree_cover_loss v1.13, 33 raster assets at 30 m resolution covering annual loss 2001-2025, pre-aggregated into country, admin-1 and admin-2 tables through a documented DATA API. It detects canopy loss worldwide but never names an opening ID or a harvesting authority.

The nearest United States analogue is tabular: the USDA Forest Service's FIA DataMart and Timber Products Output track removals, logging residue and mill residue by state, county, ownership and species group for survey years 1997-2024, with plot- and tree-level inventory for all 50 states as multi-gigabyte CSV and SQLite - no polygons. FAO's Global Forest Resources Assessment platform reports forest extent and growing stock for 236 countries at reference years 1990-2025. Only the BC catalogue resolves to individual cutblocks.

Inside Canada the complements are statistical rather than spatial: Natural Resources Canada's Forest Statistical Data publishes 44 CSV files covering roughly 22 indicators with harvest series from 2000, and Statistics Canada Table 16-10-0017-01 tracks monthly lumber production, shipments and stocks with British Columbia coast/interior detail from January 2014. Pairing those tables with the polygons is what turns a harvest-footprint map into a timber-supply model.

Certification status closes the picture for supply-chain work. FSC Connect, the Forest Stewardship Council's public registry, lists forest management and chain-of-custody certificates from holders in 165 countries - enough to test whether a cutblock's operator holds current certification, though FSC publishes it as HTML search results rather than geometry, so the join happens on names and certificate codes in your own workspace.