Developing a Strategic Analysis Framework for Managing the MPB Outbreak
This site is dedicated to informing our partners and the public on the status of our BC Forest Science Program research project: "Strategic Analysis Framework for Managing Forests under the Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreak" and is part of a network of projects concerned with research in wildlife habitat supply and forest ecosystem modelling.
The interior forests of British Columbia have recently experienced an outbreak of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, MPB) investations. Because many of the objectives of landscape-level planning are to promote sustainability and stewardship of multiple resource values with an emphasis on consistent fibre flow, events as large as the MPB outbreak can create uncertainty that can hamper achieving those objectives (Sutherland et al. 2004). They can also cause forests to lose some resilience to absorb further perturbation and reduce their capacity to provide key ecological services, such as wildlife habitat, mid-to long-term timber supply, and jobs (MOFR 2005).
Innovative and forward-looking approaches that incorporate sources of uncertainty are needed to manage landscapes for both timber and non-timber values. In the mid-1970's, the East Kootenays experienced a MPB outbreak that can be used to provide a foundation for examining the potential consequences of the current epidemic. The broad goal of our project is to exploit this information to guide MPB-related decisions through a strategic analysis that compares the consequences of historic responses to alternative management approaches.
This project will generate two major products: 1) an analysis framework to support decision makers ability to assess timber and non-timber values, trade-offs, and interactions, with explicit accounting for uncertainty; and 2) a report that evaluates current policy, presents alternative options, and provides guidance to inform MPB-related decisions.
The project directly addresses BCFSP's MPB Timber Growth and Value Program by modelling the effects of MPB attacks under different forest management strategies and incorporate stochastic factors such as climate change that may affect the potential for future MPB outbreaks, fire, land-use, and forest development.
New and Notable
Year 1 Progress Reports posted to Website
We have recently added a new Progress section to our website and have posted our Progress Reports (as PDFs) for the first year of the project on our Reports page.