PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 47: Insights, challenges, and future directions in modeling forest dynamics at multiple scales
Organizer(s): C Tripler, C Canham, C Messier, and M Papaik
Thursday, August 11, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 510a, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Modeling sustainable forest management at various scales.
Messier, Christian*,1, Papaik, Michael1, Fortin, Marie-Josée2, Fall, Andrew3, Sturtevant, Brian4, Kneeshaw, Daniel1, 1 GREFi, Dép. Sciences Biologiques, Montréal, Québec, Canada2 Dept. of Zoology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada3 Gowlland Technologies Ltd., Victoria, BC, Canada4 USFS North Central Research Station, Rhinelander, WI, USA
ABSTRACT- Forest managers and land planners are being asked to balance a higher diversity of resource objectives than ever before, including sustainable timber supplies, wildlife habitat for a large variety of wildlife species with diverse needs, biodiversity, economic development, aesthetics, and fire risk abatement. These objectives are affected by both stand and landscape level phenomena. Presently there is no one model that can provide decision support at all spatial and temporal scales relevant to forest land planning. For example, stand-level models such as SORTIE are able to capture the fine-scale structural dynamics that occur within forest stands, such as the growth and death of individual trees in response to fine-scale gap phenomena. However, they cannot simulate spatial processes that operate at larger scales. Those processes include fire spread, long-distance seed dispersal, insect spread, and timber management decisions associated with spatial management zones. Landscape-level models such as LANDIS trades mechanistic detail for the ability to simulate processes and spatial patterns at larger scales. It therefore carries little detail about the structural characteristics of individual stands that may have important consequences for wildlife habitat and biodiversity. Neither of these ecological models simulates the key socioeconomic drivers that can have enormous influence on stand and landscape-scale change in managed forest landscapes. Due to important theoretical limitations as well as physical limitations in computing power, developing a single simulation model that addresses all ecological/economic processes at all spatio-temporal scales relevant to forest planning is not a prudent use of limited resources. Instead, as part of a large interdisciplinary project, we are proposing to assemble a MANAGER TOOLKIT composed of different modeling tools that are either available now, nearing completion, or (in the case of SELES) can be developed rapidly. The toolkit will be tested in Labrador, Canada, to evaluate different scenarios that will simulate the relevant range of management options and evaluate their effect on forest landscapes relative to some desired future condition.
Key words: Boreal forest, Landscape models, Scalings, Sustainable forest management