The Canadian Ecology Centre – Forestry Research Partnership: Implementing a research strategy based on an active adaptive management approach

Abstract

Between April 2000 and March 2007, the Canadian Ecology Centre -Forestry Research Partnership funded, directed, or catalyzed approximately 145 projects. Most of these focused on knowledge and data acquisition, providing a solid foundation for a series of sensitivity and gap analyses to determine whether a long-term goal of enhancing productivity on 6 forest management units in Ontario was achievable, and more importantly, sustainable. A research strategy provided the focus for knowledge and data acquisition and the partnership facilitated integrated research, development, transfer, and implementation. Here we provide an overview of this effort, which is expected to position forest managers of the 6 forests to apply an adaptive management process to increase understanding of the response of their forests to various forest management policies and practices in the future. The strategy and approach described could be useful to other jurisdictions aiming to more closely integrate forest research and operations as well as those interested in implementing adaptive management.

Ontario's Forestry Research Partnership: Progress and next steps

“…Adaptive management has been explicitly adopted and is being applied in aspects of core business by all 3 organizations involved in the partnership (Bruemmer 2008;McPherson et al 2008;Bell et al 2008a;Smith et al 2008, this issue).…”