2.2 Afforestation plan

Management plan – more details

1. Requirement
2. Management planning documentation
3. Longer-term management intentions
4. Skógarkolefni mapping rules

1. Requirement

• There shall be a management planning documentation, initially for the establishment period, containing:
  • An outline of the necessary inputs and resources including a full financial analysis
  • A summary of operational techniques
  • A chronological plan of key project operations
  • Consideration of species selection for future climate
  • A map of the areas being planted
• The management plan shall be updated on a regular basis. There shall be an outline of the longer-term management intentions, for the project duration and beyond.
• The land manager shall have the management capacity necessary to carry out the planned project activities for the duration of the project.

Evidence of a current management plan will be checked at validation and every verification.

Management planning documentation

If the project is receiving a afforestation grant (or, as it matures, has a felling licence), any existing forest management planning documentation may provide sufficient evidence. There should be a process for updating the management plan. The key aims and objectives of your project as well as the type of forest to be created should be summarised in your Project Design Document (and updated in your Project Progress Report if changed).

The Forestry Standard (including the sustainable forest management elements of Climate Change, Soil, Water, Biodiversity, Landscape, Historic Environment and People) sets out sustainable forest management standards for Iceland and requirements for management planning.
Several open access mapping services provide free forest mapping and management planning software

Longer-term management intentions

Project developers need to set out the intended management regime of the forest for the project duration and beyond (e.g. regular thinning, clearcut with a given rotation length, continuous cover forestry, or minimum intervention). This should be consistent with the management regime assumed in the Skógarkolefni Calculator.

Skógarkolefni mapping rules

Projects should provide a map of their forest creation project as a pdf. The map forms an important part of the Skógarkolefni documentation. It will be uploaded to the International Carbon Registry and will be a publicly available document enabling potential carbon buyers as well as validating/verifying bodies to locate your project and identify the different elements within it. If you have already produced a map e.g. for a grant application, then provided it accurately represents the planting carried out and meets these mapping rules, it can also be used for Skógarkolefni. Maps should include:

• Base map
  Ideally this should be a Survey map, but other map formats are acceptable, provided they accurately show features such as roads, boundaries, forests, watercourses etc. Depending on the size of your project, you can use any appropriate scale of base map.
• Scale
  The map should show the scale of the original base map.
• Title – Name of project
  The map title should be the same name that you are using in the International Carbon Registry and in your other project documents (PDD or PPR).
• Outer boundary
  The outer boundary of your project should be clearly marked, ideally in red.
• Sections/sub-compartments
  Any sections/sub-compartments within the forest should be clearly marked and labelled (for example shaded with different colours). The forest might be subdivided into sections based on planting mix, spacing, establishment year or site type. If each section is dealt with separately in your Skógarkolefni Carbon Calculation Spreadsheet, then use the same names for sections/sub-compartments on the map and in your carbon calculation. The sections/sub-compartments will be helpful later at the monitoring & verification stage when thinking about stratifying your site.
• Open ground
  Any open ground within the open boundary should be clearly marked, where this is feasible. This should include 'open ground' which is part of a grant contract as well as any 'other land' which is not planted.
• Existing Forest and any other areas not accounted for
  Any existing forest or young planting not part of the carbon project but within the boundary should be clearly marked.
• Fencing
  Where new fencing, fence upgrades and gates will be added, please show this clearly on the map.
  Please ensure this is clear where it is coincident with project or section/sub-compartment boundaries; provide a second map with new fencing, fence upgrades and gates if it’s not possible to show everything on one page and ensure all maps are joined into one pdf.
• Grid reference
  Your map should be labelled with at least a six figure National Grid Reference, clearly marked with a cross, somewhere within the boundary of the wood, ideally near the centre. This should be the same Grid Reference you use in other documentation (i.e. PDD, ICR). If your project has several separate components/stands, use the Grid Reference of the most central or the main/largest component as the Project Grid Reference.
• Access point
  Please indicate the most suitable access point(s). This will be useful when survey or verification visits are required.
• Legend
  All features (area, line or point) on the map should be clearly identified in the map legend.
• Maps over multiple pages
  If your map has several pages, please ensure,
  
  • the project name appears on each page
  • there is at least one component/ stand with marked Grid Reference on each page to enable location of the components on that page
  • all pages are combined into one pdf document