Grant: Strategic Projects Supplemental Competition

Canada's forests are most important and renewable natural resource, contributing significantly to its environmental, social and economic well-being. To ensure that the forest resources is managed, harvesting and utilized to its maximum economic values, it is necessary to develop a series of integrated models to support a value-based and market-driven decision-making strategy instead of volume/yield-based approach. There are very few studies that have integrated the impacts of stand density management on forest ecosystem structure and functions and carbon budgets. The proposed project represents new attempt to develop a better understanding and quantifying the impacts of thinning on stand structure, biomass and carbon sequestration of jack pine stands in Canada.The overall objective is to develop stand-level models to predict diameter distribution, biomass and carbon sequestration and economic value in thinned jack pine stands in Eastern Canada. More specifically, this study is to: 1) assemble various existing dataset (G/Y, tree/crown size, wood density, biomass, carbon sequestration, product recovery) from thinned jack pine stands for model parameterization and validation purposes; 2) quantify the thinning effects on stand structure and to develop stand-level diameter distribution model for thinned stands using the basic stand characteristics;3) develop stand-level biomass and carbon sequestration models for thinned stands; 4) integrate the stand-level models with the Stand Density Management Diagram (SDMD) to develop an integrated decision-support system. This project will first and most importantly contribute to the training of highly qualified personnel (2 undergraduate students, 1 M.Sc. 1 Ph.D. and 1 post-doctorate) in the areas of forest growth / wood quality relationships and ecosytsem modelling. This work will fill in our knowledge gap in the thinning effects on stand structure, biomass, carbon sequestration and economic value in jack pine, one of the most important commercial species in Canada. This study will contribute significantly to our better understanding of the relationships between diameter/biomass distribution and wood/product quality.