Forest utilization strategies to maximize value creation from British Columbia's forest resources

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The forest sector in BC is in urgent need to modernization and innovation in order to ensure economic prosperity. Consequently the main long term objective of my research is to contribute to increase the competitiveness and sustainability of the forest sector in BC by maximising the value of wood extracted from each hectare harvested in BC.This objective would lead to more production from the same areas, which would be a major step towards addressing fibre supply and competitiveness challenges. This long-term objective will be supported by two short-term objectives: I)Optimising forest operations practices, specifically thinning, across environmental, and geographical gradients in BC using next generation equipment II)Developing novel methodologies to assess forest biomass availability, harvesting technology and methods Objective I, will be addressed by a Ph.D., which aims to i) identify innovative harvesting technologies and forest machine concepts suitable for BC, ii) determine their productivity and cost in different stand types and conditions, iii) investigate their ability to increasing regional fibre supply and overall stand value and iv) develop a decision support model to identify under which local conditions each harvesting system is the most appropriate. Objective II will be addressed by a Ph.D. and a M.Sc.. The Ph.D. will investigate the accumulation of harvest residues under varying conditions (stand types, local markets, economics) by i) updating and validating the accuracy of the  BiOS model for different site and stand types in BC, ii) further developing harvest residue prediction models to include categories of fibre harvested (sawlog, pulpwood) under varying economic and environmental conditions; iii) expanding harvest residue estimation models from stand level to landscape level estimations using geostatistical analysis approaches and iv) mapping distribution of fibre categories (log assortments) over large areas. A M.Sc. will i) investigate innovative integrated harvesting approaches for biomass harvesting in BC; ii) compare forest-to-industry supply costs; and iii) provide recommendations for uptake of innovative integrated harvesting systems for biomass in BC The research is directly helping to address challenges the forest sector is facing in BC. The science based decision support tools are contributing to a transformation in forest management and value creation from the limited forest resources. The research will engage a large number of stakeholders including contractors, forest managers, the forest industry and the ministry. In addition to the academic dissemination in journals results will also be communicated through tech guides, field visits, internships and active participation in professional conferences. Finally, the forest sector is also facing difficulties due to labor shortages and this proposed research will support the education of HQP that can have an immediate impact in the sector upon graduation.