Grant: Alliance Grants

Protecting the remaining old-growth forests in managed landscapes is now a common objective of sustainable forest management across Canada. These forests provide key habitats such as deadwood or cavities and crucial ecosystem services like carbon storage. However, old-growth forests form a complex mosaic of stands, with a wide gradient of structural and compositional attributes. Effective conservation strategies must maintain this gradient in its entirety. Unfortunately, current forest inventory data do not describe forest characteristics accurately enough to achieve these objectives. In recent years, many Canadian provinces have invested in airborne laser scanning (ALS) for forest surveys. By reconstructing forests in three dimensions on large spatial scales, this technology can deepen our knowledge of old-growth attributes in Canadian forests. Thus, in this project, our aim is to develop models using ALS data for mapping of habitats (e.g., deadwood, cavities), biodiversity (e.g., woodpeckers, invertebrates), and ecosystem services (carbon stocks) within the structural and compositional gradient of old-growth boreal forests. To achieve these objectives, we will rely on an extensive network of old-growth boreal forest monitoring plots in the province of Quebec, as well as multiple ALS surveys, including one conducted at the provincial scale. The mapping of forest habitats, biodiversity, and carbon stocks across the gradient of forms that old-growth forests can take will offer significant benefits to our partners, the Quebec Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests and Chantiers Chibougamau. For example, it will contribute to evidence-based policies and regulations that safeguard the habitats and ecosystem services provided by these critical ecosystems, while also enabling informed decisions during forest operations. This combination of a comprehensive ecological perspective and advanced remote sensing technologies will establish Canada as a leader in the management, conservation, and restoration of old-growth forests.