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Abstract

As of 2016, there were 57 community forestry organizations in British Columbia apart of various community forest agreements (CFA). Community forests allow for the development of multi-use management plans to reflect a diverse set of values. The availability of detailed information of the forested area is vital to maximizing a community’s benefits and profits. Airborne laser scanning (ALS) can provide estimates of conventional forest attributes, advance inventory attributes along with spatially describing ecosystem services (ES). This thesis combines ALS data, ground sampling data and vegetation resource inventory (VRI) data for the Sunshine Coast Community Forest (SCCF) located near Sechelt, British Columbia in a case study of the application of ALS data to benefit a community forest. Primary attributes (height, diameter at breast height, stem number, quadratic mean diameter, Lorey’s height, volume and biomass) were calculated using an area-based-approach. A secondary attribute (stem size distribution) was calculated using a two-parameter Weibull probability density function. Finally, a tertiary attribute - site indices - was calculated using maximum height from ALS. The reliability of primary attributes predictions varied, with stem number being the poorest (R²=0.51, p-value