The landuse of forestry and the state of the forests have been and remain
areas of intense public and political debate. The debate is focused on the
many values forests have to society other than just timber production, and
the fundamental question of sustainability of the existing harvesting landuse.
The images presented here cannot provide definitive answers to either of
these questions. Nevertheless, they do contribute to the debate because
they are informative. They unambiguously show the nature and spatial patterns
of landcover change associated with landuse of forestry. In the harvesting
operations for sawlog and woodchips, the coup sizes, were small and distributed.
Also, the patterns, sizes, and distribution within the landscape of the
coups appeared to evolve during the period of looking back.
The total area of the coups is not the only criterion by which to assess
the severity of the disturbance of forest landuse to wildlife. It is now
known that many of the rarer forest animals have very restricted distribution.
These animals are associated only with the forest communities that grow
on the high fertility soil sites. Therefore a harvesting strategy that takes
only the best trees will also selectively destroy the habitat of this endangered
fauna. This understanding has been accepted by some state forestry agencies
and this acceptance may explain the changes in the patterning of the coups.
Large scale clearing appeared to be associated only with the conversion
of native forest or woodland to plantations and with agriculture. This returns
us to the last question asked: does the synoptic view provided by satellite
images contribute to a better understanding of the issues?
My feeling is that it does. It makes that contribution through the big picture;
by providing a unique overall view. In this case, the big picture convinced
me that it is possible to objectively monitor the state of the forests and
the performance of the state agencies responsible for them. It also strengthened
the opinion that to conserve the remaining forest landcover, the landuse
activities of forestry and also of agriculture must be monitored.
