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Free-Growing Policy and Climate Change

Explore the impact of climate change on free-growing stands in British Columbia and the need to adapt forest management practices. Assess the effectiveness of the Free-Growing declaration and its implications for future stand productivity in the face of environmental shifts.

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Free-Growing Policy and Climate Change

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  1. Free-Growing Policy and Climate Change Alex Woods, Regional Pathologist, NIFR, MOFR

  2. How are free-growing stands doing?

  3. E-Squared Free-Growing Project Overall Objective: To test if the Free-Growing declaration point-in-time assessment is an accurate predictor of future stand productivity and if the assumptions of stand performance are valid.

  4. Lakes Okanagan Strathcona

  5. Results: Forest Health/Free Growing Lakes TSA 18% of Free-growing stands in the Lakes TSA no longer contain the minimum 700 fgsph based on the LCL rule.

  6. TIPSY projected volumes and Free-growing density Lakes TSA

  7. Photo: J. Hodge

  8. The Basic Foundations • The marriage of free-growing and the BEC classification system has lead to a sophisticated ecosystem-based forest management policy framework in BC.

  9. The Basic Foundations • The ability of licensees to fulfill their basic obligation of reforestation to create free-growing stands is based on a stable timber supply, a competitive industry and a profitable marketplace.

  10. Climate change is already undermining these foundations.

  11. Photo: E. Havard

  12. Photo: E. Havard

  13. A free-growing designation pre-supposes that young trees will continue to grow and thrive in a relatively stable environment…

  14. “Do not mess around with details. Consider that within an 80-year rotation the environmental conditions on Elsemere Island are predicted to be suitable for growing trees!” Richard Hebda, 2007

  15. Timber Supply and the Mountain Pine Beetle Infestation in British Columbia: 2007 Update Forest Analysis and Inventory Branch “Given the amount of regeneration that will be needed, the risk of future beetle outbreaks and a warming climate being a possibility, short-term silvicultural practices will have a large influence on forest conditions in the mid and long-term.”

  16. Future Forests Ecosystems Initiative Objective #5 . Adapt the forest and range management framework to maintain and enhance ecological resilience and ecosystem services, products and benefits under changing ecological conditions Strategy to Achieve that Objective: Determine which aspects of forest and range management framework should be adapted, and how, in response to climate change.

  17. Free Growing = Proactive? = Resiliency? • A results-based policy framework with free-growing policy at its core is by nature re-active. • Management choices made in order to cost effectively achieve the result of “free-growing” are not necessarily the same choices that would be made in order to make a resilient stand capable of coping with the effects of climate change.

  18. Is it time to examine Free-Growing Policy in light of Climate Change?

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