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The Commission and the NSW Forest Monitoring Steering Committee will engage with the community, environment and industry stakeholders on the program design, implementation, annual reviews and major reviews.
The program seeks to work with a wide range of partners, including community organisations, Indigenous groups, and universities to draw in monitoring, research, data, and evaluation skills, and convening and consolidating experience from across the state at local and regional levels.
Public reporting of the program results and progress will be made available, including any recommendations of the Commission and the NSW Forest Monitoring Steering Committee for any suggested changes to the Coastal IFOA, RFAs or the NSW Forest Management Framework.
Community forums
The program has committed to host community forums. This is an opportunity for people to learn more about the program, ask questions and provide feedback.
2022 Forums
Webinar 5 - Future forest scenarios
Webinar 5 - Recording, including panel discussion
Webinar 5 - Presentation
Webinar 5 - Questions and answers
The Forest Monitoring and Improvement Program engaged eminent experts in forest management, resilience, and future thinking to work with agency representatives in developing scenarios representing different plausible futures for NSW forests to 2050.
Professor Peter Kanowski and futurist Adjunct Professor Steve Cork presented their work including an outline of possible NSW forest futures scenarios. Dr. Peter Hairsine, Australian National University and Scott Matter, NSW Dept. Premier and Cabinet also joined the panel to discuss the work.
More information, including the scenarios report can be found here.
Webinar 4 - Baselines and trends for forests extent, condition and loss
Webinar 4 - Recording, including panel discussion
Webinar 4 - Presentation
Webinar 4 - Questions and answers
This webinar focused on the methods to measure forest extent, condition and loss of forests across the NSW Regional Forest Agreement regions between 1995 and 2019. The consortium of experts developed methods to measure historical trends in forest extent, initially focused on NSW Regional Forest Agreement regions. The methods leverage existing data from an extensive set of existing and historical forest monitoring programs. This project forms part of the wider NSW Forest Monitoring Improvement Program. The work was presented by the Data Scientist and Senior Geospatial Analyst Harmen Romeijn at Spatial Vision. Professor Patrick Baker also joined the panel to discuss the work.
Learn more about the work, including access to data here. Data for extended state-wide analysis, including data covering the data between 2019-2020 will also be soon available.
Webinar 3 - Baselines, drivers and trends for forest water catchments
Webinar 3 - Recording, including panel discussion
Webinar 3 - Presentation
At this webinar, Dr Danlu Gou from the University of Melbourne presented her research team’s work on baselines, drivers and trends for water quality and quantity for NSW forested catchments. A/Prof Angus Webb and Prof Andrew Western, both from the University of Melbourne also contributed to the work. Researchers applied new and novel statistical approaches to identify the flow responses to climate variability and impacts from catchment disturbance, including fire.
Dr Peter Hairsine, Australian National University joined the webinar panel to discuss the work.
Learn more about the work, including access to data here.
Webinar 2 - Carbon balance of NSW forests
Webinar 2 - Recording, including panel discussion
Webinar 2 - Presentation
Webinar 2 - Questions and answers
This webinar focused on the program’s recent work to quantify the carbon balance of NSW forests. The outcomes of this assessment outlined in the final report represents a significant advancement in understanding the trends in forest carbon across NSW in the last 30 years.
The work was undertaken by the Commission on behalf of the NSW Forest Monitoring Steering Committee. The analysis was undertaken by a team from The Mullion Group, NSW Department of Primary Industries and CSIRO. During the webinar the lead researchers, including Geoff Roberts and Dr Fabiano Ximenes presented findings and insights. Professor Patrick Baker, University of Melbourne joined a panel to discuss the work.
Note: This webinar contains research and commentary on forest biomass conducted by Dr Fabiano Ximenes, NSW Department Primary Industries. This research was not funded by the NSW Forest Monitoring and Improvement Program, nor undertaken by the Commission.
Webinar 1 - Baselines, drivers and trends for species occupancy and distribution
Webinar 1 - Recording, including panel discussion
Webinar 1 - Presentation
Webinar 1 - Questions and answers
Prof. Nick Reid, Dr. Rod Kavanagh and Dr. Brad Law presented their recent work to develop baselines, drivers and trends for species occupancy and distribution in forests across NSW Regional Forest Agreement regions. Prof. Phil Gibbons joined the researchers on the panel to discuss the work.
This work was commissioned by the Forest Monitoring Steering Committee and undertaken by a team of scientists from leading universities, NSW agencies and the private sector.
Recognised as the largest and most significant project of this type in the history of NSW forest management, the final report is a benchmark in terms of data collation, methodological approach and outcomes.
2020 Forums
Webinar 2 - Coastal IFOA monitoring program
Webinar 2 - Video
Webinar 2 - Questions and answers
Webinar 2 - Summary
The Commission hosted a webinar in November 2020 with a panel of members from the NSW Forest Monitoring Steering Committee to update the community on the coastal IFOA monitoring program. The program now has detailed monitoring plans in place for forest health, biodiversity, water quality and wood supply. A research and evaluation program is also in place.
The webinar video is available above.
More detail about the Coastal IFOA Monitoring Program is available here.
Webinar 1 - Data driven forest management
Webinar 1 - Video
Webinar 1 - Questions and answers
Webinar 1 - Summary
The Commission hosted a webinar in October 2020 with a panel of members from the NSW Forest Monitoring Steering Committee. The program has now invested over $2.5 million with 20 project partners. The webinar provided an overview of the projects and other elements of the program. The panel also answered stakeholder questions.
The webinar video, and the questions and answers are available above.
Aboriginal stakeholder engagement plan
The Commission and the NSW Forest Monitoring Steering Committee will engage and work with the Aboriginal people during program design, implementation and reviews.
Aboriginal people are important stakeholders in their role as forest owners and managers in NSW. Forests provide economic opportunities and connection to Country for Aboriginal people. Around 15 percent of forests in NSW are owned or managed by Aboriginal people.
The Commission worked closely with Aboriginal Affairs NSW, NSW Aboriginal Land Council and Aboriginal Executive Network in the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment to develop an Aboriginal stakeholder engagement plan for the program. The plan aims to establish ongoing, meaningful and respectful engagement with Aboriginal stakeholders and communities.
- Aboriginal stakeholder engagement plan (February 2020)
Open data
In-line with the NSW Government Open Data Policy, the program will release commissioned data and information for use by the community, research, business and industry. All program data will be made available on NSW’s Sharing and Enabling Environmental Data (SEED) portal or the Spatial Collaborative Portal.
Project: Data services
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Spatial Vision will analyse data management practice and management standards, support developing appropriate data architecture and infrastructure for the program, and source and integrate data. The work will build on, and link to existing data infrastructure such as the NSW SEED data portal. Dr Zaffar Mohamed-Ghouse, a former Director at FrontierSI (previously CRC for Spatial Information), will lead the work. This work will support the program to address all state-wide evaluation questions.
