156 resources found

This extension note serves as a guide for adapting forest and range management practices in the Skeena Region of British Columbia to the realities of climate change. Recognizing the significant impact of a warming and wetter climate with increased extreme weather on local ecosystems, it synthesizes current climate change research to project future conditions and their ecological consequences. The document outlines potential adaptation strategies for resource professionals and government staff involved in operational planning, effectiveness monitoring, and climate action plans. Ultimately, the goal is to foster resilient ecosystems that can continue to provide essential services and products in the face of ongoing climatic shifts.

This paper details an experimental crown fire conducted in an Alberta, Canada, boreal black spruce forest to assess the effectiveness of recent crown thinning as a fuel treatment. Researchers ignited a 3. 6-hectare fire, observing its behavior in both untreated and thinned sections. The key finding was that while thinning led to a significant reduction in fire intensity, it did not reduce the fire's spread rate nor total fuel consumption. This suggests that in dense boreal black spruce with high surface fuel loads and low crown base heights, thinning alone may not prevent the rapid progression of crown fires, but it could potentially aid suppression efforts by reducing the intensity.

This paper explores operational resilience in western U. S. frequent-fire forests, emphasizing how historical forest structures fostered health and adaptability. The authors argue that very low tree densities prior to widespread fire suppression minimized competition, which in turn supported vigorous tree growth and greater resistance to stressors like drought and bark beetles. By comparing historical data with contemporary forest conditions using the Stand Density Index, the authors found a significant increase in tree density and competition today. This sugests that current management practices, which are focused primarily on fuel reduction, may not adequately restore the ecological resilience historically maintained by frequent, low-intensity fires. The paper advocates for a fundamental rethinking of forest management to prioritize significantly lower tree densities and minimal competition to enhance long-term forest health.

This report presents models to predict the likelihood of Douglas-fir mortality and bark beetle infestation following wildfires. The authors developed these tools using data from past fires in Montana and Wyoming, aiming to improve both pre-fire planning and post-fire management decisions. The report details the significant variables influencing tree survival and beetle attacks, such as crown scorch and cambium damage, and includes a supplementary field guide with visual aids and methods for field data collection, providing a practical resource for forest managers.

This LMH Document #79 outlines the principles and best practices for silvicultural systems in British Columbia, emphasizing a shift toward complex, multi-value forest management in the 21st century. Its primary purpose is to serve as a central reference and conceptual framework for forest professionals to design and implement silvicultural plans that move a stand from its current state to a desired future condition through planned interventions, known as stand development pathways. A crucial and recurring theme is the growing role of First Nations, including their traditional knowledge, values, and stewardship goals, which are integrated alongside ecological, social, and economic objectives. The document provides detailed guidance on technical aspects, such as managing for biodiversity, mitigating risks like windthrow and pests, and utilizing adaptive management for continuous improvement in forestry practices.

This document outlines the critical need to braid Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science to create climate-adapted forests in the United States. A primary theme is the historical impact of Euro-American colonization, fire exclusion, and settler colonialism on North American forest ecosystems, leading to the loss of Indigenous stewardship and creating dense, fire-maladapted landscapes highly vulnerable to severe wildfires and climate change stressors. The text defines IK as an invaluable, multi-generational body of systemic knowledge and cultural practices emphasizing kinship with nature and reciprocity, contrasting it with the empirical and objective approach of WS.

This document introduces the concept of fire-smart forest management as a pragmatic approach to achieving sustainable forest management in Canada's fire-dominated ecosystems. The core challenge addressed is how to simultaneously minimize the socioeconomic impacts of fire while maximizing its ecological benefits, objectives that have historically been seen as contradictory. Fire-smart forest management integrates both forest and fire management activities, from stand to landscape levels, through proactive planning, such as altering forest fuels to reduce the potential for undesirable wildfires and lessen the risks associated with prescribed burning. This new paradigm is necessary because traditional aggressive fire suppression is reaching its maximum effectiveness, necessitating a shift in attitude to embrace fire's essential ecological role and mitigate its negative effects through integrated management strategies.

This document synthesizes existing knowledge on reintroducing fire into long-unburned, fire-dependent forests of the United States, specifically focusing on how to minimize mortality of large, old trees. Historically, these ecosystems experienced frequent, low-intensity fires, which kept fuel loads low and fostered fire-tolerant species. However, over a century of fire suppression has led to unprecedented accumulations of deep duff and increased tree densities, making reintroducing fire a complex challenge that can paradoxically harm the very old trees practitioners aim to protect. The document delves into causes of tree injury and mortality from fire, such as basal cambium damage from smoldering duff and subsequent bark beetle attacks, and explores various management options including prescribed burning with the aim of restoring historical forest conditions and preserving venerable trees.

This document synthesizes findings from over 25 Canadian research watersheds to examine the highly variable impacts of forest management on water resources. It emphasizes that factors like topography, subsurface geology, climate, and forest type significantly influence these effects, making direct knowledge transfer between regions challenging. The document highlights the importance of conservation measures like riparian buffers, which, while generally effective, require tailoring to local conditions. It emphasizes the need for future research to identify critical processes that mediate forestry's effects on water, integrating both large-scale watershed-level studies and detailed stand-level investigations to improve the transferability of findings for sustainable forestry practices.

This webinar argues that managing the escalating crisis of high-severity Canadian wildfires requires a move beyond traditional fire suppression toward proactive fuel management. The key is to apply a strategic risk framework that prioritizes efforts based on both fire probability and the immense consequence to critical values at risk, such as vital infrastructure, vulnerable communities, and watersheds. Effective mitigation must combine mandated land-use regulations, such as strict FireSmart building standards, with a significant increase in landscape-level fuel treatments, including prescribed burning. The webinar discusses that achieving long-term success necessitates a fundamental reworking of the existing forest management framework in British Columbia to adequately integrate fire resilience and prevention.

This document establishes a consistent provincial approach for fuel management planning in British Columbia. The primary purpose of this document is to direct forest professionals in developing Wildfire Risk Reduction Plans, which strategically identify and prioritize areas for fuel management projects on Provincial Crown land adjacent to communities. The plan outlines a phased WRR Plan Development Process, moving from data collection and risk analysis to the delineation of planning units, such as Wildfire Risk Reduction Units, and the smallest operational-scale Fuel Management Units, with an emphasis on total-chance planning to ensure community resiliency by reducing wildfire intensity and increasing suppression opportunities. The successful execution of a WRR Plan requires extensive collaboration and coordination among various stakeholders, including the BC Wildfire Service, land managers, and Indigenous Nations.

This document outlines best management practices developed by the Chief Forester to reduce the harmful effects of slash pile burning in British Columbia forest management. The core purpose is to minimize waste, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and maximize fibre utilization through integrated planning, silviculture, and harvesting techniques. Rather than offering prescriptive solutions, the document presents a range of options, such as promoting partial cutting and scattering woody debris, which must be evaluated based on site-specific factors like fire risk, biodiversity, and economics. This document seeks to treat forest management as a versatile tool to achieve diverse environmental and resource values.

This document provides guidance on using fuel treatments and prescribed burning to protect whitebark pine forests, emphasizing methods to mitigate WBP mortality during fire. It outlines specific thresholds for crown and bark char damage that threaten tree survival and suggests that mechanical treatments may be necessary to reduce fuels prior to burning, particularly in areas with abundant competing conifers. The document categorizes forest stands as Good, Marginal, or Avoid Candidate Areas for prescribed burning based on the presence of cone-bearing WBP trees and vigorous regeneration, advocating for mechanical fuel reduction in high-value areas and generally advising against burning stands with high levels of cone-bearing trees or limited competition. Finally, the paper recommends coordinating fire planning with silviculturists and entomologists to account for factors like mountain pine beetle pressure and ensure a heterogeneous forest structure that minimizes the risk of large, high-severity wildfires.

This webinar highlights the urgent need to shift from aggressive fire suppression in British Columbia to a paradigm that embraces controlled fire and Indigenous fire stewardship. The webinar argues that fire exclusion has created a wildfire deficit disorder, resulting in massive fuel accumulation and increasingly severe, unsuppressable fire events. A core theme is the critical importance of recognizing and integrating the deep expertise of Indigenous practitioners, whose knowledge of cultural burning is often overlooked in favor of expensive and less effective suppression tactics.

This paper examines ecosystem management strategies for the paludified boreal forests of Canada, emphasizing how to simultaneously enhance wood production, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration. The authors delve into how natural disturbances, particularly fire severity, influence forest dynamics, soil properties, and the diversity of plant and invertebrate communities. They then contrast these natural processes with the impacts of different logging methods on soil, productivity, and understory vegetation, highlighting how traditional clearcutting and careful logging compare to natural fire regimes. Finally, the paper discusses the critical role of these forests in carbon sequestration and proposes management approaches that emulate natural disturbances to maintain old-growth forest characteristics and mitigate climate change.

This extension note investigates recent changes in aboveground live-tree carbon within spruce and fir-dominated sub-boreal forests in the interior of British Columbia. The study specifically re-evaluated carbon stocks between 20032004 and 2018 at the Aleza Lake Research Forest to understand how carbon storage is impacted by tree species and size. The authors found that while younger forest stands generally accumulated carbon, older stands with larger trees showed a decline in aboveground live-tree carbon, largely due to increased mortality of these large trees. This highlights a critical concern regarding the role of mature forests in carbon sequestration amidst accelerating climate change and increasing tree mortality rates.

This webinar presents results from a simulation study of north-central New Mexico that investigated the relative effectiveness of a variety of fuel treatment strategies and the tradeoffs of implementing fuels programs with competing management goals.

This paper addresses the severe decline of High Elevation Five-Needle White Pine forests in western North America, primarily due to mountain pine beetle outbreaks, white pine blister rust, and altered fire regimes exacerbated by changing climates. The authors advocate for multi-scaled management interventions to promote resilience to disturbances and genetic resistance to white pine blister rust. The paper details the critical need for long-term programs like inventory, mapping, and research, alongside active restoration treatments such as mechanical cuttings and prescribed fires, and proactive tree-level measures like planting rust-resistant seedlings and protecting high-value trees, all while integrating climate change considerations throughout the planning and implementation process.

This research compiles and analyzes a national database of dead and down woody debris to improve fire behavior and effects modeling in Canadian forests. The study emphasizes that DWD is a major component of surface fuels, significantly impacting fire intensity, consumption, and the transition to crown fires. By examining various forest types and ecozones, the authors identified key predictive variables such as bioclimatic regime, age, and structural components. This work provides crucial tools for a more accurate understanding of DWD distribution across Canada, enhancing the country's ability to forecast and manage wildfires.

This paper explores the complexities and challenges associated with using gap-based silviculture in the mesic northern forests of North America. The authors begin by outlining the theoretical basis of gap management, which assumes that creating canopy openings enhances tree species diversity. However, the paper emphasizes that relying solely on varying gap size often falls short of achieving diversity goals due to a multitude of interacting factors beyond light availability. These crucial factors include site history, seed dispersal, competition from other vegetation, and the impact of herbivores. The authors propose a revised, more integrated concept of gap-based silviculture that incorporates a broader range of ecological considerations and active management of understory conditions to promote structural complexity and enhance tree species diversity in these valuable forest ecosystems.