Using nature’s template to best advantage in the Canadian boreal forest

Landscape-scale disturbance and boreal forest birds: Can large single-pass harvest approximate fires?

“…Logging road density is related to fragmentation of the regenerating landscape and previous simulation studies have shown that the spatio-temporal aggregation of cutblocks can reduce the footprint of roads (Delong, 2002). However, this might not be the case in mountainous terrain or where older harvests may not have constrained road networks (D'Eon, 2007).…”

“…Furthermore, our optimization routine provides the first quantitative targets for residual retention based on data other than landscape patterns. Aggregated harvest systems are often considered more cost effective due to harvesting and transportation efficiencies (Delong, 2002;D'Eon, 2007). Given the slight improvement in approximating NRV and increased efficiencies, we suggest forest managers in the Boreal plain preferentially use single-pass harvests instead of multi-pass harvests, and use the percentiles from our optimization to set targets for and relative proportions of harvests receiving these attributes.…”

“…While creation of larger cutblocks might allow the forestry industry to decrease the ''footprint'' of roads and fragmentation (Delong, 2002), other benefits have not been tested. Greater ranges in variation of remaining structure are generally seen in larger natural disturbances (Bergeron et al, 2002;Schulte and Niemi, 1999), and so larger cutblocks with residual patches may overlap with post-fire forests at least in terms of such structural attributes.…”

Moving riparian management guidelines towards a natural disturbance model: An example using boreal riparian and shoreline forest bird communities

“…This natural disturbance hypothesis assumes that forest biota will be more likely to adapt to anthropogenic disturbances that retain structural attributes similar to the natural disturbances with which the species have presumably evolved (Attiwill, 1994). Fire is considered the dominant disturbance agent in the boreal forest (Rowe and Scotter, 1973) and attempts to mimic disturbances using forestry have primarily used wildfire as a model (DeLong, 2002). In efforts to align forest management with ecologically based paradigms, modifications to conventional forestry practices have included cutting larger areas (aggregating cutblocks), retaining live residual trees within cutblocks and, more recently, cutting closer to water bodies (DeLong and Tanner, 1996;Saskatchewan Environment, 2006b).…”

Using knowledge of natural disturbances to support sustainable forest management in the northern Clay Belt

“…Over the past decade, there has been an increasing interest in forest management approaches based on natural disturbance dynamics (Attiwill 1994, Bergeron and Harvey 1997, Angelstam 1998, DeLong 2002. The rationale is that management favouring the development of stand and landscape compositions and structures similar to those in natural ecosystems should maintain biodiversity and essential ecological functions (Franklin 1993, Hunter 1999.…”