Grant: Alliance Grants

Contemporary hardwood forests are being decimated by the continued expansion of biotic threats globally. The near elimination of foundational ash species from eastern North America forests and urban environments due to the expansion of the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) emphasizes the imminent threat facing forest-based ecosystems, autochthonous traditional knowledge, and economies across Canada today. There is an urgent need to pair conservation in situ with preservation of resources ex situ to establish breeding programs aimed at establishing rapid approaches to assessment and monitoring for resistance and restoration. The proposed partnership will develop such an approach to conserve the Black Ash, an ecologically and culturally important species of North-Eastern America. It will combine the expertise of researchers of the Institute for Temperate Forests Research and of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) in forest genomics, with the local knowledge on Black Ash dynamics of the Ndakina Office of the Grand Council of the Waban-Aki Nation (GCNWA) and the Kahnawà:ke Environment Protection Office (KEPO) to lay the strong foundations needed to start a successful breeding program. It will be the first project to document the species' range-wide genetic variation and adaptive capacity. The expected end-products consist of 1) genomic-informed ecological niche models to assess populations vulnerability to climate change, 2) a network of permanent plots to monitor the EAB invasion and 3) ash regeneration seed orchards planted with the propagated LA ash trees identified.