Silvicultural scenarios to promote resilient stand structures (AD3a)

Within the interior dry forests of BC, the impact of catastrophic disturbances, including beetle infestation and fire, have had significant impacts on the amount of timber available, its quality, and its accessibility on the land base. An MSc student will take a retrospective approach with the objective to link the pre-disturbance forest structure and composition over the landscape to the likelihood of disturbance. Focusing on the QN Hub, the MSc student will combine pre-disturbance lidar and provincial inventory data with recent spatial coverages of fire severity and beetle infestation to establish whether certain stand structures or species composition were more resilient to these disturbances. The student will then propose different thinning strategies. Outcome (AD.3a): Identification of resilient stand structures and proposed silvicultural scenarios to promote them and help reduce risk of loss to future disturbances.


Rover Liu, MSc at University of British Columbia
Main Partner: FPInnovations, Future of Forestry Think Tank (British Columbia)
Professor Dominik Roeser