Grant: College and Community Innovation Program

The College and Community Innovation Grant will facilitate capacity building in applied research at Selkirk College especially targeted to support the regional forest sector which is currently experiencing a protracted downturn. The project will focus on development of prototype applications that could allow local small and medium forest enterprises to access, evaluate and analyse data and tools related to potential opportunities in forest carbon markets. The overall project goal is the development and deployment of several potentially transferable and commercializable decision-support tools for forest carbon management (FCM). Although there are some existing decision-support tools designed for FCM, there appears to be considerable need for adapting and customizing them to make them more accessible and useable to regional forest sector SMEs. The outcome will be development of innovative and user-friendly FCM decision-support applications for extension and transfer to regional forest dependent businesses. A regional partnership, to be called the Decision Support Collaborative (SDSC), will be established between forest sector stakeholders in the Kootenay Columbia region and Selkirk College---especially the Selkirk Geospatial Research Centre (SGRC) and Regional Innovation Chair (RIC). The SDSC will expand the scope of the existing Kootenay Spatial Data Partnership (KSDP) to include: new small and medium forest companies, community forests representatives, provincial regulatory ministries, the Kootenay Association for Science and Technology (KAST), and representatives from Selkirk College. The purpose of this partnership will be to advise, collaborate with, and guide the project research team in its efforts to build applied research capacity that will assist the regional forest sector adapt, diversify and grow in a changing global environment and economy.