Making EMENDS: Daishowa and Canfor have joined forces in a $4.5m plus, multi-partner eco-system study in northwestern Alberta that is raising the standard of forest industry research

Canadian Forest Industries, Nov/Dec 2001 by Jamieson, Scott

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Canfor systems development forester Tim Vinge (left) and DMI woodlands superintendent Steve Luchkow at the start of EMEND Trail 3. Detailed signage, a well-designed field guide, web site, and a welcome kiosk help inform the public, government, and other researchers about EMEND and its work.

If this is indeed the information age, the managers of Daishowa and Canfor's forestry operations in Alberta's Peace River region are set for the times. Having chosen to pursue an adaptive management approach on the approximately 400 000 hectares of mixed-wood boreal forest they co-manage in northwestern Alberta, the hardwood and softwood consuming companies have launched an extensive research project to test their planning assumptions. Both the management philosophy, and the research behind it reflect a new era in extensive forest management.

Steady aim

Frank Oberle, management forester with Daishowa-Marubeni International (DMI) in Peace River, says the company's approach to forest management began to change back in the mid nineties, while he and Wayne Thorp, DMI Alberta manager, were involved in developing the Alberta Forest Conservation Strategy.

"A lot of new ideas were floated around at the time, and the one we really caught on to was ecological management--the idea that a forest is bigger than the sum of its parts; that there's something going on across the forest that we're not accounting for in the way we manage at the stand level. As a result there was the chance that unless we accounted for those broader forest processes, the forests we were creating at the time wouldn't sustain the biodiversity that we, and the public, wanted."

Oberle recalls that the two foresters were soon committed to this new forest management philosophy. Implementing such a sweeping paradigm shift was another matter. In the end, it took seven years to hammmer out the details and create a workable operating plan, with a lot of questioning and many detours along the way.

While DMI is involved in managing some nine million ha throughout northern Alberta in conjunction with other timber users, the hardwood pulp company chose one area it co-managed with Canfor's Hines Creek softwood lumber operation to design and test the model. A new plan based on adaptive, ecological management was submitted in 1999, and was approved in the summer of 2001. In its simplest form, the plan includes three key elements: Long-term objectives; operational methods for getting there; and a system to verify success and respond to failure along the way.

- Clear Objectives: The starting point is a long-term vision of what the 400 000 ha of mixed-wood boreal forest will look like over the next 200 years, including, age-class distributions, species mixture, and combinations of those across the broad scale landscape pattern. Obtaining this forest 200 years from now, as well as versions of it along the way, is the management plan's over-riding goal.

- Appropriate Means: Next are harvesting/regeneration options designed to reach that goal on a stand-by-stand basis, broken up in 10-yr planning windows. This involves a switch from Alberta's famous two-pass checkerboard approach to a single-pass approach with a more extensive hut lighter overall footprint. In addition to including such economic limitations as minimum acceptable merchantable volumes up front, the plan includes some fine-scale, within-stand patterns required to meet long-term goals.

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Key among these is the decision to leave behind 15% of the merchantable fibre within stands across the entire landscape. It is aimed at creating conditions immediately after the harvest and for years to come that are similar to those found in natural stands after such disturbances as fire and disease. Oberle is quick to clarify that they are not trying to emulate fire or other natural disturbances in their harvesting and regeneration tactics. "Rather we are trying to provide some of the structural elements that fires provide, like green islands, standing stems, large patches etc..." A subtle distinction perhaps, but one that will maintain a healthy close of humility among Canfor and DMI foresters. This in turn is crucial to the new approach's third key element--adaptability.

- Process Control: Recognizing that ecological and extensive forestry is new to DMI and Canfor, and to forestry in general, the plan calls for constant monitoring of how current actions are, or are not, creating the forest types planned for from 10 years to 200 years out. A true adaptive management approach, it calls for each year's activities to be fed back into the planning model, which in turn will determine whether the crews are on target for obtaining the overall goals. If not, plans for upcoming years will be altered to stay on track.

Rolling out maps and a chart showing the harvest matrix for the next 10 years, Oberle explains how this combination of rigidly defined objectives and flexible tactics will play out.