Overview of Online Research Chats
Are you someone who’s conducted research or an innovative forestry project and has some key information to share with the policy and management community? Can your research results help transform an innovative and competitive forest sector? Then the "Online Research Chat Series: Management Questions – Science Answers" are for you and we need to hear from you soon!
What is a research chat?
A research chat is a short, virtual dialogue, facilitated by FORREX and the Provincial Forest Extension Program, to help you showcase how your research has made a difference. With travel restrictions and time and funding limitations, we recognize that keeping up with the latest innovations in today’s environment has a few challenges. One solution is a series of virtual interactive forest science lunchtime chats from October 2009 to March 2010. These virtual dialogues will allow research proponents to briefly describe—in 15–20 minutes—the management problems their project is addressing and any information or lessons learned from their work. These chats will provide a venue for policy and management practitioners to hear how research results may help answer their questions, all from the comfort of their offices.
Helping us know what we have in terms of natural resource capital, and how to improve our knowledge of that asset in a cost-effective way
(Note: This topic links to many of the FIA Landbase Innovative Projects)
- New inventories
- Tools/approaches for using inventories more effectively
- Evaluating what we already have—are our existing tools meeting our needs?
- Case studies on new tools and innovations
- New initiatives using SIBEC, BEC, and VRI
- Fish/Forest interactions—how can we improve or build on these interactions to the benefit of both values?
- Habitat information to ensure that we leave the best structures behind, now and in the future
- Integration/platforms where data can be shared temporally and spatially
Helping us predict future scenarios
(Note: This includes FIA–FSP Sustainability PAC priority topics such as 1.2, 1.5, 1.6, 2.6, and 3.2 and FIA–FSP Timber Growth and Value priority topics such as 3.0 and 5.0)
- Predictive models (such as climate predictions) versus projections—how can the art help inform the science and vice versa?
- New approaches to helping us predict the future (for example, carbon accounting), and how to validate and evaluate?
- Scenario results—how can this tool help us move forward into the future?
- New updates to FORECAST, LLEMS, and other models—and how these models can fit into an integrated growth and yield for the future
- What people say they want—tools to help us appreciate public expectations
- Ecosystems' responses to various changes
- Seed migration work for tree improvement
Helping us achieve landscape objectives with new tools/approaches
(Note: This includes FIA–FSP Sustainability PAC priority topics such as 1.6, and 2.1 and FIA–FSP Timber Growth and Value priority topics such as 2.0)
- What role can alternative silvicultural systems play in achieving objectives that transcend stand boundaries?
- Showcase long-term research installations (MASS, OPAX, Sicamous, Date Creek, Pothole Creek, SCHIRP, etc.)—what are the lessons we have learned and some unexpected surprises?
- The latest information from the Future Forest Ecosystems Initiative—where are we at with this initiative?
- New tools to help us plan and account for habitat attributes in timber supply
- The latest information from long-term watershed experiments
Helping us achieve landscape and stand objectives with new operational tools/approaches—to let us know what’s working and what still needs work in terms of:
- Harvest schedules
- Operability
- Road network
- Others?
New tools/management approaches and strategies to achieve various stand-level objectives including timber and other values (wildlife, biodiversity, soil conservation, etc.).
(Note: This includes FIA–FSP Sustainability PAC priority topics such as 1.4 and 4.0 and FIA–FSP Timber Growth and Value priority topics such as 2.0)
- Species interactions in complex systems—what are the implications for forest/range management?
- How do these strategies affect forest health agents or vice versa?
- Silvicultural tools or strategies to achieve stand-level attributes that are beneficial to various forest values
- New operations tools to help plan and implement stand-level strategies in a cost-effective manner
- The latest in FPinnovations/Fibre Centres work—efficiencies in the full value chain to meet target stand objectives
- Latest developments in implementing Forests For Tomorrow work
Tools/approaches to ensure long-term ecosystem productivity
(Note: This includes FIA–FSP Sustainability PAC priority topics such as 1.1, 1.2, and 3.0 and FIA–FSP Timber Growth and Value priority topics such as 6.0 and 7.0)
- What are the best approaches/tools to manage or balance the need for water with the need for fibre?
- Tools to help us understand how ecosystems will adapt to the changes in climate
- Seed migration—how is forest policy changing to address this?
- Soil and long-term soil productivity—what are the options for producing different products, and where can they be applied?
- Carbon offsets and accounting—who is the carbon custodian?
- Criteria and indicators—evolving the Sustainable Forest Management Plan?
- Non-timber forest resources—how do we ensure their sustainability?
