Designing successful forest renewal practices for our changing climate

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Climate change and increasing forest disturbances and diebacks are creating new challenges for forest renewal. Recent forestry plantation failures in British Columbia, due to insects and diseases amplified by climate change, indicate that standard operating practices (clearcutting and replanting with nursery-grown seedlings) urgently require reassessment. On many of these sites, locally adapted natural regeneration is outperforming planted seedlings, but the reasons for this are unknown. Improving forest renewal after harvesting or natural disturbances is crucial to the long-term sustainability of our forests, including their ability to support biodiversity, store carbon, and promote a healthy Canadian forestry sector. The goals of the proposed strategic project are to investigate across a range of climate regions: (1) the effects of novel renewal methods, including differing levels of variable retention harvesting and regeneration using tree species mixtures, on seedling success, biodiversity and carbon cycling; (2) the role of legacy trees (healthy, stressed, and dying) in forest regeneration and maintenance of beneficial soil biota; (3) the performance of mixed seed sources, including locally-sourced and transferred (genetically selected) seed, to identify optimal combinations. Finally, we will (4) integrate this new knowledge to formulate recommendations for best harvesting and regeneration practices under changing climatic conditions. This research provides enhanced training opportunities for nine graduate students (5 PhD and 4 MSc) in addition to several undergraduate assistants. Through working closely with our government and industry partners, the BC Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and Brinkman Group, we are uniquely positioned to not only investigate how different levels of forest retention and post-harvest regeneration techniques affect ecosystem services in a range of climatic regions, but also to communicate this information to forest practitioners and policy-makers for immediate use. We anticipate that our project will provide essential information to the forest sector for optimizing harvesting and regeneration practices as climate changes, thus providing vital ecological and economic benefits for all Canadians.