Silviculture Research

Silviculture research explores stand establishment, stand tending, the various silvicultural systems used in British Columbia and evaluates the benefits and impacts of those systems. Silviculture research also provides the information needed to develop and verify growth and yield models, to help district silviculturalists make field decisions and to formulate regional and provincial policy. 

Today, changing forest Practices have shifted the focus to predicting the effects of management on long-term forest dynamics and to developing mixedwood and broadleaf management strategies. 

Silviculture research is carried out in the following principle areas:

• Vegetation management research assists with the development of cost-effective and environmentally sound methods for managing vegetation.

• Growth and yield field studies assess growth and yield responses to various silvicultural treatments. Past emphasis has been on even-aged treatments, but the focus has shifted to complex stands and partial cutting systems.

• Silvicultural systems research examines alternative approaches to managing stands of trees and other vegetation over time, to meet a variety of resource-use objectives. As well as general interactions between silviculture and the management of non-timber resources.

• Management of conifer-broadleaf mixtures (mixedwood) is an emerging area of research. Understanding the ecology of all species in a mixture, including the dynamics of growth patterns and other processes, is fundamental to developing and refining policy, stand management guidelines and mixedwood stocking standards and models.

• Forest regeneration and standing-tending research develops management solutions for problem forest stands (ex. overly dense lodgepole pine stands). Research is focused on understanding the stand's site ecology, reproduction and seed biology, stock quality and ecophysiology.