British Columbia Significant Regional District Park Natural Areas (SRDPNA) Project
October 2023
By: Riley Smith
Prepared for:
Background
The purpose of this project was to update the British Columbia Local Government Park Natural Areas (LGPNA) GIS dataset completed in 2017 by The Nature Trust of British Columbia, Ducks Unlimited Canada, and the Canadian Wildlife Service. The 2017 dataset included only the undisturbed more natural portions of municipal and regional district parks in order to inform and support conservation planning in British Columbia. Unfortunately, the 2017 dataset was incomplete due to a lack of available digital data for several local governments and many parks have been created, altered, or removed since then. The updated dataset titled British Columbia Significant Regional District Park Natural Areas (SRDPNA) has these important distinctions from the LGPNA:
• Due to limited time, the focus was exclusively on regional district parks, since they are more likely to be larger and more ecologically intact, as opposed to municipal parks that are more likely to be altered and managed for intensive recreation. (Note: municipal parks from the original 2017 LGPNA project were retained in a separate layer but not updated)
• Similar to the 2017 dataset, disturbed portions of parks (i.e., parking lots, playgrounds, intensively maintained lawns/fields and open grass fields that are mowed only occasionally) that represented greater than 10% of the total park size were manually digitized using ArcGIS Imagery and removed.
• To focus on larger more significant parks, those with less than 1 hectare in area were excluded. (i.e. beaches, recreational areas, trails, and water accesses)
• Park polygons are sourced from ParcelMap BC (PMBC) where applicable, the authoritative dataset of digital legal parcels in British Columbia. Therefore, in some cases, these polygons are more positionally accurate than the version from the regional district datasets.
As of 2023, the total hectares of significant regional district park natural areas is 43,281 ha, which involves 676 park polygons.
Ducks Unlimited Canada Practicum Poster
This poster was created as a deliverable for the BCIT ADP program, during a 2-month practicum placement with Ducks Unlimited Canada.
This poster describes the early research work into updating the Local Government Parks and Natural Areas (LGPNA) GIS Dataset.
Clicking on the picture will open a PDF version in a new tab.
Research done during the practicum determined the quality and availability of data from local governments as well as the methods to best update the LGPNA dataset.
It was determined that updates would start with the regional districts first and only include those parks that are more naturally significant.
Updating the LGPNA
Regional District Park Source Data Acquisition
Parks data was sourced from any publicly accessible parks data layer for each district including open data portals, web map exports or ArcGIS REST Service layers. For any regional districts without relevant parks data available, park lists were compared to existing LGPNA park areas. Any outstanding parks were verified using other data (if available) such as static maps, web maps, official community plans (OCP), zoning layers or park master plans. Source data was acquired in August 2023.
Regional District Park Inclusion Criteria
1. The park area is owned by the regional district OR jointly managed with an NGO. Parks owned and operated by the regional districts are often designated as regional parks, but they may also include community parks, conservancy areas and unofficial parks or greenspaces. Unless identified as a national, provincial, municipal, or private park, park areas in the district’s source data were assumed to meet this criterion.
2. The park must contain a natural area over 1 hectare in size. Any park areas below 1 hectare in the source data were not added. Any park areas below 1 hectare in the original LGPNA dataset were removed. Any park above 1 hectare but with a natural area below 1 hectare was also not added/removed.
3. The park area must be naturally significant. Any obvious non-natural park areas were removed/not added to the final layer. This includes park areas containing recreational fields or sports complexes, intensively maintained lawns/fields, playgrounds, beaches, waterfront accesses, wharfs, or boat launches. Also removed were trails, greenways, highly landscaped, developed, or disturbed parks
Example park plan document from the Regional District of Central Kootenay. Park boundaries generally follow ParcelMap BC parcel lines and parks can be updated to align with its latest version.
Assessing Park Areas
Park areas were either updated, created, unchanged, removed or not added.
Updated
The boundaries of the park area and other attributes, if applicable, were updated in some way from its original LGPNA version. Most park areas were updated to align with the latest version of the ParcelMap of BC.
Created
The park area was added as a new record to the updated layer. This includes new parks, parks not previously added and new sections of existing parks.
Unchanged
The park boundary was maintained from the original LGPNA layer and its attributes were not significantly adjusted. Most unchanged park areas are where the park does not follow any PMBC parcels and its boundaries are identical to those in the source data.
Removed
The park area is in the original LGPNA layer but was removed because it doesn't meet the inclusion criteria for the updated layer.
Not added
The park area exists in the source data but does not meet the inclusion criteria for it to be added to the updated layer.
Examples
Yaqakxaqⱡamki Regional Park (Koocanusa Boat Launch) in the Regional District of East Kootenay is an example of a removed park area. It was included in the original LGPNA layer in 2017 but no longer meets the inclusionary criteria set for this project since it contains little to no natural area.
707 Community Park in the Regional District of Nanaimo is an example of an updated park area. Its boundaries have changed since 2017 and the park polygon was updated to represent those changes.
2017 LGPNA
2023 SRDPNA
Updated version of 707 Community Park after being aligned with ParcelMap BC parcel boundaries based on the latest source data.
Grouse Mountain Regional Park in the Metro Vancouver Regional District is a newly created park for this project since it was established following data collection during the 2017 LGPNA project.
Methodology
Aligning Park Areas to ParcelMap BC
Most parks follow PMBC parcel lines, however, as seen below there is often inaccuracy between the data sourced from the regional districts and the latest PMBC version. Therefore, polygons were always aligned to the PMBC wherever applicable instead of just being copied from the source data.
The 2 methods used to achieve alignment were:
Create features and transfer attributes method.
This method involves copying PMBC parcel polygons, pasting them into a new layer and then transferring the attributes from the old features to the new features.
Replace geometry method.
This method works best for features that need little digitizing or can be traced more easily. It involves using the replace geometry tool in ArcGIS Pro and tracing the PMBC parcel lines as the new geometry for the park area.
Conducting Spatial Edits
Parks were spatially edited to remove non-natural areas if the non-natural area represented >10% of the park's total size. This was a characteristic of the 2017 LGPNA layer, however, much land-cover change has occurred since 2017 and new spatial edits needed to be made for this project.
Blenkin Memorial Park (left) in the Strathcona Regional District was spatially edited to remove non-natural areas.
Updating Attributes
Majority of the attributes are retained from the original LGPNA project layer. However, alongside park boundaries, a number of fields were updated pertaining to the information available from PMBC. This includes parcel identification numbers and ownership type among others. Some new fields were created to keep track of updates and denote if parks are in single parts, are considered "Active" or "Developed" or are naturally intact.
Example section from an attribute metadata table for the 2023 SRDPNA layer. These 3 fields above were created for this project, however, there were many more created, updated and unchanged fields in the layer.
Summary
The British Columbia Local Government Park Natural Areas (LGPNA) GIS dataset completed in 2017 by The Nature Trust of British Columbia, Ducks Unlimited Canada, and the Canadian Wildlife Service had a total of 1,143 polygons in its regional district parks layer.
The updated dataset titled British Columbia Significant Regional District Park Natural Areas (SRDPNA) created as a result of this project has a total of 676 polygons.
The final polygon count is as follows:
552 updated
80 created
44 unchanged
485 removed
This project's mission was to provide Ducks Unlimited Canada and its data partners The Nature Trust of British Columbia and the Canadian Wildlife Service with an updated version of the 2017 LGPNA dataset. The LGPNA dataset was incomplete due to a lack of available digital data for several local governments and since 2017 many parks have been created, altered, or removed.
The updated SRDPNA layer provides a more trimmed-down version of the original 2017 layer and includes only those larger and more ecologically significant regional district park areas. This not only makes it easier to update in the future but it eliminates smaller parks, such as those below 1 ha, that are not as important for conservation planning.
Since this project aims to align parks with the latest version of ParcelMap BC, most park polygons can be considered more positionally accurate and up-to-date than the regional district's source data and GeoBC's Local and Regional Greenspaces layer, at least as of the project completion in October of 2023.