Comox Valley Disturbance Assessment

Project Description and Location: This project provides a second disturbance assessment of sensitive and other important ecosystems originally mapped in the Comox Valley in the Sensitive Ecosystems Inventory of East Vancouver Island and Gulf Islands. Using air photos from 2007 to 2012 it provides a twenty year look at the status of the lowland Comox Valley’s remnant natural ecosystems.

The study area falls in the Comox Valley Regional District (CVRD) administrative area (except Denman and Hornby Islands) and portions of the Nanaimo and Strathcona Regional Districts. It is based on watershed boundaries, extending from Deep Bay in the south to the Oyster River in the north and follows the height of land in the Vancouver Island and Beaufort Mountain ranges to the west. The project includes a 350 metre buffer that captures the foreshore ecosystems mapped by the original SEI.

Project objectives: The goal was to provide updates to the original SEI to monitor changes to ecosystems over time, and to provide a basis for implementing strategies to conserve and restore them.

Project partners: The Comox Valley Conservation Strategy-Community Partnership (CVCS-CP) initiated the project in partnership with the Comox Valley Regional District (CVRD), the Ministry of Environment and Vancouver Island University. Major funding was provided by the Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia with in-kind support from the Comox Valley Regional District (CVRD) staff.

Standards and scale used: This project followed the methods set out by Axys Environmental Consulting Limited in their June 2005 report, Redigitizing of Sensitive Ecosystems Inventory Polygons to Exclude Disturbed Areas. The digital data model was updated to include some fields from the Standard for Mapping Ecosystems at Risk in British Columbia 2006. The report and mapping was completed October 2014 at a scale of 1:10 000.

Data & Reports

Report authors: Juniper Environmental Services

Digital files on EcoCat: Comox Valley Sensitive Ecosystems Inventory Disturbance Assessment