The latest from 'Adapt'

Amy Wotherspoon
1 déc. 2022
1 min de lecture

For the third consecutive week, we're catching up with our high quality personnel (HQPs) to hear about the latest research projects under the 'Adapt' theme!

In 'ADAPT', research tests innovative silvicultural treatments and forest management strategies adapted to the new socio-environmental reality, thus working to ensure the sustainability of the fibre supply across Canada.

On Tuesday, November 29th, we heard from the following HQPs with projects under the Adapt theme:

Click a name to read their summary

Dane Pedersen (New HQP!) - AD 5a: Deliberative-analytic framework to engage publics and stakeholders

Tenure changes and increased disturbance rates in interior BC are resulting in collaborative models of forest management through, for example, community forests with First Nations representation and, in the case of the QN Hub, the establishment of a forestry think tank initiative. As different adaptive forest management solutions are proposed, as well as silvicultural prescriptions examined, continual dialogue is required with forest professionals, community forest members, and QN think tank participants on their wider implications.

Working with social scientists, Dane's objective to build and apply an analytic-deliberative framework to enhance dialogue around emerging forest plans and scenarios, in order to better understand the diversity of community and First Nations perspectives about acceptable solutions. Additional focus groups and interviews will delve further into the basis of inevitably diverse perspectives and preferred governance solutions that exist in BCs publicly-owned forests so as to generate locally-informed, scientifically sound, and institutionally realistic solutions.

Dane Pedersen

PhD student, UBC

dp2641@mail.ubc.ca

Ethan Ramsfield (New HQP!) - AD1: Revisiting existing trials

NEBIE, which stands for Natural, Extensive, Basic, Intensive, and Elite, is a long-term study established in the early 2000’s. The purpose is to look at the impact of the intensification of silviculture on productivity, as well numerous environmental factors. Out of the eight sites, I will be using the growth and yield data from the Timmins site. This past summer was the 20th year of the study. The forest type at the Timmins site is a boreal mixedwood dominated by white spruce, black spruce, and trembling aspen.

There is the idea that increasing silviculture intensity will result in higher productivity, but it will reduce heterogeneity and structural complexity. This idea was created around the management of monocultures, but there is limited research on silviculture intensity and how it impacts mixedwoods. Therefore, the question I am hoping to answer is how does silvicultural intensity impact structural diversity and homogeneity when regenerating Mixedwoods? As more intensive silviculture is required to regenerate an intimate mixedwood stand, I do not expect that increasing silviculture intensity will reduce complexity but rather may result in a more complex, heterogenous stand.

Ethan Ramsfield

M.Sc student, UAlberta

eramsfie@ualberta.ca

Anne Bernard - Project AD8a: Silvicultural practices at the pace of global changes

In order to ensure a better resilience of forests, the adoption of silvicultural practices of adaptation to climate change is a solution to consider. The implementation of these new practices depends on many factors, including the social dynamics related to the forest management already in place on the forest lands. Through semi-structured interviews with actors involved in forest management and an analysis of regulatory tools, it was possible to identify a list of attributes to characterize and compare the Sylva21 study sites among themselves.

These attributes fall into two categories: 1- social-ecological attributes and 2- governance attributes. Specifically, the social-ecological attributes include disturbance regimes, ecological, social and economic challenges and opportunities, industry types and uses, and stakeholders. Governance attributes include tenure types, forest management objectives, decision-making processes, and public participation processes. The results of the study will identify strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities related to the adoption of silvicultural practices for climate change adaptation.

Anne Bernard

Postdoctoral Fellow, ULaval

anne.bernard.1@ulaval.ca

Sandrine Paquin - Project AD 5b: Climate change and adaptive silviculture: playing with a serious game

To adapt silviculture to climate change, certain barriers have already been identified by some practitioners, such as the impacts of climate change, the lack of knowledge transfer between scientists and professionals, and in particular, the lack of social cohesion between professionals and the various stakeholders in forest management. It is specifically this last barrier that will be explored in this study. Through the serious game, a new innovative social science approach, the potential for collaboration in the context of adaptive silviculture will be explored.

A serious game was conceptualized for this project specifically to answer the objective of collaboration. In total, four game sessions all around the hubs with Silva21 members as players as been organized; Vancouver, Fredericton, Petawawa and Quebec. With two sessions done and two left to go, the experience is beyond expectations, some said “We should work like that and collaborate in real life”. Indeed, during the next phase, the analysis, many elements will be analyzed; the insights, experiences and interactions of the players. With the results and a future paper in progress, we will determine the potential of this new tool for decision support and stakeholder discussions throughout collaboration theory and engagement.

Sandrine Paquin

M.Sc student, ULaval

sandrine.paquin.1@ulaval.ca

Laurence Boudreault - Project AD 6: culturally important species

W8banaki basketry is fine art that demands high quality black ash wood. The practice and the species is now under threat because of global changes. In the last year, after collecting samples and conducting wood analysis with W8banakiak knowledge carriers, we were able to document black ash wood properties associated with good quality.

It appears that basket markers prefer thin to narrow ring (between 1.39mm and 1.83mm) of a high density (>584kg/m3), which means that growth speed and duration influence wood quality for basketry. Knowing that, we think that by having a better understanding of the growth condition linked to those properties, it will be possible to propose adaptation and restoration actions that are relevant for basketry and black ash survival in terms of wood properties, quality and regeneration.

During the last summer, we collected 70 black ash core samples in 15 different plots on the Ndakina (ancestral land of the W8banaki Nation that correspond to the Estrie hub). This step of the project is conducted in partnership with Jérôme Laganière from the Centre de foresterie des Laurentides (RNCan) who, along with his team, are collecting soil samples. In addition to the samples, we noted a variety of variables linked to tree vigor, competition, basketry potential and sites. In the next months, we will carry out densitometry tests and start the statistical analysis related to growth condition and wood quality.

Laurence Boudreault

PhD candidate, ULaval

laurence.boudreault.3@ulaval.ca

Catherine Beaulieu - Project AN9: Flexibility in forest management to preserve caribou habitat

The boreal ecotype of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) is particularly sensitive to habitat fragmentation caused by forest harvesting. Indeed, it has previously been demonstrated that forest operations can affect their space use, as well as their habitat selection, predation risk and foraging behavior. While caribou populations on the North American continent are decreasing in response to habitat disturbance, the Newfoundland’s population, devoid of wolves (Canis lupus), seems to fare better. The dominant forest management company conducting operations on the island aims to implement a flexible management plan to allow the maintenance of the species, preventing it from reaching critical numbers, while maintaining wood supplies. The objective of this project is to evaluate the impact of forest fragmentation on caribou’s habitat selection. To achieve this, a cost surface will be modeled in conjunction with graph theory to describe the connectivity between the various high-quality patches (i.e., large patches of old-growth forests or other types of land covers with a high abundance of available resources and low predation pressure).

Current work is on analyses that have to be carried out before running resource selection functions (RSFs). The yearly seasonal distribution of the animals of each herd need to be calculated in order to study habitat selection in caribou ranges. Two methods of distribution are being compared: The Minimum Convex Polygon (MCP) and the Kernel Density Estimation (KDE). The method that best reflects actual habitat used by woodland caribou will be used to run the resource selection functions.

Catherine Beaulieu

M.Sc student, ULaval

catherine.beaulieu.14@ulaval.ca

Guillaume Moreau - Project AN 4: Stem vigour and growth of tolerant hardwoods

Our results confirmed that crown dieback is by far the best indicator of vigour for both sugar maple and yellow birch trees. Conversely, our results revealed that stem defects did not contribute much to explaining the variation in vigour, except for the presence of cankers and fungi, which had modest effects. Consequently, stem defects should not be used as the main indicators of tree vigour, and existing classification systems should be simplified by reducing the number of stem defects under consideration for this purpose.

Guillaume Moreau

Postdoctoral Fellow, UofT

guillaume.moreau.3@ulaval.ca

Tommaso Trotto - Project AD 2: Learning from the past: key stand attributes linked with resilience

Forest disturbances act as stand-replacing or non-stand replacing forces. While the former involves complete disruption of the landscape- or stand-level forest structure, the latter occurs at small-to-medium scales and renders subtle and pervasive modifications of the forest structure. Forest fires, insect infestations, windthrows, and diseases over small extents, are instances of non-stand replacing disturbances affecting the Canadian boreal forest. In general, it is challenging to map and report such disturbances using traditional inventory data collection methodologies. Hence, remote sensing tools, such as Aerial Laser Scanning (ALS), offer an opportunity to capture fine-scale variations in the forest structure at a high spatial resolution and attribute them to a specific disturbance agent and severity.

In this work, a novel forest structure-based change detection framework is proposed to detect small variations in a bitemporal ALS data catalog and attribute them to a non-stand replacing disturbance. The current framework takes advantage of a multiresolution sampling approach to extract a set of geometric features which describes the spatial arrangement of the ALS Point Cloud within a series of user-defined search radii. The multiresolution approach permits that geometric features extracted at the finest search radius are contextualized using information from the larger search radii. The change detection is then carried out by direct feature comparison between acquisitions. Finally, the results are validated on pre-existing inventory data. At present, this approach is very accurate in the detection of stand-replacing disturbances. However, constant development is made to improve the detection sensitivity towards non-stand replacing disturbances, and new upcoming results will show the reliability of the proposed framework.

Tommaso Trotto

PhD student, UBC

tommaso.trotto@ubc.ca

Rover Liu - Project AD 3a: Silvicultural scenarios to promote resilient stand structures

Rover's presentation was a brief overview of the objective of his research project and his role in Silva's bigger picture. His presentation is summarized as follows:

Description of his study site and silviculture system type - irregular shelterwood
Description of his sampling design
Update of his work so far
Steps to go for the next few months

Rover Liu

M.Sc. student (UBC)

roverliu@student.ubc.ca

If you are a member of the Silva21 team and would like to receive a copy of all slides, please email our scientific coordinator (amy.wotherspoon@ubc.ca)

Our next round of update meetings will take place in Spring 2023!

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