On Friday, Dr. Phil Burton spoke of resilience, robustness, recovery, adjustment, adaptability and transformation with regards to an ecosystem’s propensity to deal with disturbance. He gave many examples of how different ecosystems exhibit varying levels of resilience and explained some of the challenges associated with managing our forests.

I enjoyed how Dr.Burton supplemented the theoretical with practical examples. Particularly, I found it interesting that fire did not spread any differently in beetle killed pine forests (Carrot Lake Experimental Project) than a living forest. I thought that dry, dead trees would be optimal fire fodder, but didn’t take into account the higher soil moisture content from reduced tree flux.

According to Dr. Burton, we can manage for resilience through promoting genetic, species and landscape diversity, which will ultimately, maintain continuity or provide barriers (to pests or fire), as well as maintain the integrity of biotic legacies and soil nutrients. Furthermore, forest managers must address species range expansions with a changing climate, in order to optimize future conditions. Risk adverse management strategies must be created in order to avoid precarious conditions like we saw prior to the pine beetle outbreak with even aged and contiguous forests. Finally, Phil suggests that we must learn to live with fire. Fire has become our reality, and we can best manage this by reducing fuels, converting stands to broadleaf or thick bark species, and encourage thinning which will increase soil water content and subsequently decrease fire risk.

This talk was relevant to my own research, as I am interested in mixedwoods and the benefits of diverse stands. Phil affirmed several points that I have been recently reading about regarding the use of broadleaf species as firebreaks, thereby increasing the stand’s resilience to fire (and also pest).

The silviculture industry has come a long way since I started Treeplanting 7 years ago, where we would work on 1000 Ha clear cuts planting 90% Pine. Now, with an increased emphasis on diversity and retention, block sizes are getting smaller and more trees are left standing with some foresters moving away from the pine heavy prescriptions, and aiming for more diversity. Phil’s talk on Friday was another step forward in the right direction, but I am interested in how to apply these ideas. Two questions I would have posed to him is “how can we implement these strategies? And How can you get independent licensees to buy into the over arching goal of managing a sustainable forest, when so many are concerned with simply their own yield?”