Moderator: Laurie Kremsater, MSc, RPF, RFBio, Principal and Wildlife Ecologist, LLK Consulting

It is an exciting time in British Columbia with a significant amount of collaborative planning underway in the context of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA). Advances in modelling technology and modern datasets are transforming forest planning as we embrace concepts of whole land management with a focus on biodiversity and ecosystem health. We now have the ability to build models from a foundation of interconnected values and their associated stewardship to create connected future forest outcomes. These models include the integrated stewardship of values and the resulting forecast of future blocks and roads up to 300 years into the future. This fundamentally transforms how we can evaluate and forecast the many elements of biodiversity and ecosystem health.

One important element of biodiversity and ecosystem health is ecosystem integrity. An approach to measuring ecosystem integrity in managed forests was developed using LiDAR and other datasets. A score was assigned to each stand considering its stand structural complexity using LiDAR, stand age, tree species diversity, polygon size (interior habitat), and landscape context (neighbouring attributes). Structural complexity is an important forest attribute that correlates with other indicators of ecosystem recovery and integrity, such as understory vegetation development and habitat diversity. Current conditions were assessed using recent LiDAR and forest inventory data. Future conditions were modelled based on a spatial planning model forecast of the forest.

This integrated approach to assessing both current and future ecosystem integrity allows us to visualize and evaluate ecosystem integrity across time and space. This provides a framework to evaluate the varied forest stewardship practices being considered in forest landscape planning processes throughout the province. It also creates a basis for ground sampling and monitoring to further validate the ecological integrity scores and refine the assessment over time.

This session will share practical insights on how developing a connected future forest outcome provides an opportunity for transformative change. This includes a detailed look at how LiDAR, forest cover inventory data, and a spatial planning model were utilized to evaluate ecosystem integrity 300 years into the future in a managed forest landscape.

Learning Outcomes

Following the presentation, attendees will have learned the following:

1. How advancements in data and technology have made integrated planning possible, in a manner where we can respect that everything is connected and assess values through space and time.
2. What ecosystem integrity is and some of the assessment methods that have been developed to measure it in BC.
3. How LiDAR data has transformed how we can assess ecosystem integrity by measuring stand structural complexity, that is correlated with old forest attributes such as understory vegetation development, coarse woody debris, and habitat diversity.
4. How spatial planning models allow the integration of all values to provide a connected future forest outcome that includes the forecast of blocks and roads, providing the opportunity for predictability and stability.
5. Why adaptive management and monitoring are important, and why learning-by-doing provides the ideal approach, in the face of an uncertain future.