Measuring and Modelling Ecological Resilience

The BC Ministry of Forests and Range has recently undertaken a Future Forest Ecosystem Initiative (FFEI) whose purpose is to adapt the BC forest and range legislation and policy to a changing climate and to ensure BC’s forest and rangeland ecosystems remain resilient to stress. This research project helps to provide a scientific underpinning for the FFEI by developing mathematical models that predict how ecological resilience varies across environmental gradients and in response to cumulative environmental stress. It combines theoretical modelling of ecological resilience and ecosystem diversity with field research and takes advantage of a network of long-term field studies of forest succession established throughout the central Interior of BC. Fieldwork will be conducted with the intern during the summer and early fall of 2007 to re-measure existing field plots.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Suzanne Simard

Student:

Sybille Haeussler

Partner:

BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development

Discipline:

Forestry

Sector:

Forestry

University:

University of British Columbia