Grant: Collaborative Research and Training Experience

The environmental, social and economic importance of forests for Canadians is overwhelming. Forests contribute to our economic well-being, provide habitats for many wildlife species, store an enormous amount of carbon, filter water and provide unique recreational and spiritual values. Many of these essential forest ecosystem services are being threatened by climate change, invasive species and an unsustainable resource development. New approaches and modeling tools are needed that can deal with the large number of processes interacting at multiple spatial and temporal scales. With the help of CREATE and in collaboration with the Centre d'Étude de la Forêt (CEF), we propose to create a new interuniversity, interdisciplinary bilingual training program in Forest Complexity Modeling (FCM). Training in this field has been identified as a priority by many industrial, governmental and private partners; Canadian universities do not presently educate enough graduate students with the competence to model complex processes over meaningful space and time. An integrated set of winter courses, intensive summer training sessions, seminars, discussion groups, field trips and internships will be organised. These training activities will cover the theoretical concepts, approaches used, and examples of the use and application of the latest tools and knowledge in the field. Outstanding national and international undergraduate and graduate students, as well as PDFs, will form the core of this new, unique and vital Canadian training program. Internationally recognized experts will be invited to participate in the program. Funding will provide scholarships and internal internships to students and provide new and unique training in the emerging field of modeling dynamic and complex systems with applications to understanding and managing forest ecosystems. This program fits within both the natural resource and energy area and the environmental science and technology area of the CREATE program.