Kamloops Future Forest Strategy II

Climate Change Adaptation: Bringing Researchers & Practitioners Together to Explore Operational Questions by Harry Nelson.  A presentation for the Southern Interior Silviculture Committee (SISCO) in British Columbia. April 5, 2011.

The K2 year end report for the Future Forest Ecosystem Scientific Council is now available.  Click here to download.

Branchlines is a quarterly newsletter of the University of British Columbia Faculty of Forestry.  This fall’s issue features an article about the K2 project:

“Climate change adaptation, facilitating action on the ground”

Effective forest management begins with an understanding of historic forest conditions and associated ecological processes. It also requires an understanding of the potential range of plausible trends over time, including the powerful influence of climate change. However, incorporating assumptions of climate change into forest management planning is a daunting task replete with
uncertainty. Nevertheless, it is necessary as the effects of management under climate change can have profound effects on the health of British Columbia’s forests and forest industry, as shown by the mountain pine beetle epidemic. A collaborative effort by forest practitioners and UBC researchers is embracing this uncertainty in the Kamloops Timber Supply Area (TSA).  Read more.

During the week of April 19, 2010, Cam Brown, Stewart Cohen, and Cindy Pierce of the K2 Research Team spent time in Clearwater and Barriere, BC to share the initial findings of the project and to hear observations about climate change from residents. Nearly 100 community members participated!

We thank everyone for their participation and contributions in this collaborative effort!

For a complete description including outcomes and downloadable handouts, please visit our webpage on these meetings.

Also, be sure and check out this article from the Clearwater Times.

Increase in temperature expected to lower our timber productivity

From ClearwaterTimes.com

Manage the unavoidable and avoid the unmanageable. Those are the two key principles in developing a forest strategy for the Kamloops Timber Supply Area, according to information released during a District of Clearwater meeting on Feb. 15.

Manage the unavoidable and avoid the unmanageable. Those are the two key principles in developing a forest strategy for the Kamloops Timber Supply Area, according to information released during a District of Clearwater meeting on Feb. 15.

The project area includes the forests within the district as well as forests in the valley that can be seen from the district. They are the forests that the timber and tourism businesses rely on, and that community members recreate within, noted a document by consulting team member Cindy Pearce.

“Climate and forest changes are already evident in the Clearwater area,” she wrote. “The extensive mountain pine beetle outbreak that has created patches of dead pine trees and the recent extreme fire conditions during very dry summers are linked to climate.”

The average July temperature in this area is expected to increase by two to six degrees C by 2050. The average temperature in January is expected to go up by two degrees C in the same 40 years.

A small increase in total precipitation (three to four per cent) is expected, with more coming as rain and less snow. Summer precipitation might decline by one to 10 per cent.

“These changes are expected to lower timber productivity and cause significant issues for biodiversity, water, wildlife habitat, fish species and visual quality,” Pearce wrote.

One of the first priorities in forest-based communities is to pay greater attention for emergency preparedness for households, businesses and all levels of government. An understanding of future climates might change Official Community Plan decisions related to community wildfire protection, land use in flood prone areas or management of trees on district property.

The next steps as seen by the K2 team are as follows:

• Modelers to obtain climate data to allow for exploratory data runs (By mid March).
• K2 team to choose example stand types for preliminary stand level model runs to address some of the questions posed by K1. The intent is to show types of output and how it can be interpreted (By mid April). This output will be used to provide a starting point for Working Group discussions.
• Get Working Groups together to look at the initial modeling and then determine the full range of ecological questions we want to pursue – mostly stand level (in May sometime).
• From there explore what landscape level questions are key (after May).

K2 Working groups and Ecological themes (Feb 11, 10) This is a tentative list of the follow-up working groups and their potential participants.  If you missed out on signing up, or know of someone else that may be well suited to a specific working group or groups and is interested, please pass their name and email to us (dperez at interchange dot ubc dot ca).

A new Discussions page has been added to the K2 website.