Innovation Anthology #24: Professor, Resource and Environmental Studies
With all the development in the boreal forest, one of the major concerns for ecologists is the conversion or permanent loss of forest to grasses and agricultural land.
When Dr. Phil Lee looked at development trajectories for the Integrated Landscape Management Program at the University of Alberta, he found a typical pattern has repeated itself since the 1940’s.
Oil and gas exploration opens up the land with seismic lines, wellsites and roads. This is followed by logging and then agricultural development. Inevitably the forest gives way to grasses and shrubs.
DR. PHIL LEE: We’re starting to see that ecosystem conversion now from strictly a forested system to one that supports a mix of grassland and shrub land species. They facilitate the invasion of organisms that are not traditionally associated with the boreal north into the boreal north. We’re already seeing a lot more white tailed deer and coyotes in the south. We now have tracking evidence that coyotes are fairly common in black spruce bogs. Fifty years ago there was absolutely no reports of that occurring in the boreal north but we believe seismic lines have brought them in.
Dr. Phil Lee recommends one way to break this pattern of conversion is to plan development so it happens simultaneously. This makes restoring the forest more possible.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY, I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
Peter Duinker, PhD,
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, peter.duinker@dal.ca
Sponsor
NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Integrated Landscape Management
The Integrated Landscape Management Chair is developing a toolkit for ecologically informed land use planning. At the heart of this toolkit is a suite of models capable of integrating multiple land use activities over large areas and long time scales to explore the future impacts of todays land use decisions. The models do this by linking human actions to indicators of ecological, economic, and social condition. They are constrained by their ability to adequately represent the dynamics of complex systems, and our current research emphasis aims to reduce the uncertainties over the impacts of invasive organisms on species at risk in Canadas boreal forest.
The ILM Chair is an initiative of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta, with sponsors and collaborators in academia, government, and the private sector.
Program Date: 2007-04-05