Salvage harvesting of dead trees

When stands are hit by catastrophic disturbances such as fire, salvage harvesting provides significant opportunities to gather value from the remaining timber as well as potentially promoting faster regeneration and re-establishment. The large fires in both BC and, to a lesser extent, in northern QC offer a tangible experiment to assess the location, timing, and extent to which salvage logging can provide both economic and ecological benefits. Working with forest managers at both QN and LSJ Hub sites, a PDF will examine the state-of-the-art salvage logging methodologies that can be applied, reviewing international experiences where relevant, with the objective to design and develop salvage harvesting prescriptions and ‘shelf-life’ recommendations for a range of processing pathways such as lumber, pulp and bioenergy. We will work across a range of forest types and burn severities impacted by the fires using both simulations and case studies. Outcome (AD.4a): Recommendations on the most efficient and cost-effective salvage harvesting approaches to use in the different scenarios.

Recruiting, PDF at University of British Columbia
Main Partner: Future of Forestry Think Tank (British Columbia)
Professor Dominik Roeser