Research Areas

R

Resource Characterization

  • Determine the state of the hardwood resource in New Brunswick (N.B.).
  • Improve inventory process in N.B. to provide the important characteristics of hardwood stands and trees required to formulate strategies at all scales.
  • Create a process for better prediction of volume distribution by species in present and future stands.
  • Revise stratification methods for hardwood-dominated stands to attain operational efficiency.
  • Develop methodology and criteria to characterize tree quality.
  • Produce eligibility matrices for existing stands, based on a tree quality determination process.
  • Recommend the research needed to fill in knowledge gaps.

Importance of Site and Climate

  • Develop and mobilize knowledge and solutions related to the use of silviculture as a climate change adaptation and mitigation tool.
  • Inform forest stakeholders of the potential impacts of climate change on forests and enable them to respond to these changes by providing the proper silviculture techniques and tools

Implementation and Impacts of Silviculture

  • Determine which regimes, treatments, and prescriptions to model to increase growth and yield.
  • Determine response patterns to silvicultural treatments in our region.
  • Improve our capacity to model the effects of silviculture.
  • Revisit silviculture systems for hardwood-dominated stands to align them with long-term economic profitability.
  • Develop forestry practices and silvicultural treatments that will regenerate desired species and discourage undesirable species like beech.
  • Synthesize knowledge already gained in this area, Quebec, Ontario and the United States.
  • Quantify the effects of silvicultural treatments on growth in even-aged and uneven-aged stands.
  • Better understand the dynamics of regeneration of species after treatment.

Efficient Forest Operations, Wood Supply and Analytics

  • Determine how to reduce the cost of forest operations during light-harvest treatments.
  • Evaluate the effects of forest operations (harvesting) in terms of damage to residual stems.
  • Find ways to reduce harvesting costs by treating more candidate areas in the same sector.
  • Redefine silvicultural treatments based on the value chain.
  • Learn how to maximize the value of stems harvested.
  • Make forestry operations more profitable.