Open Collections

Harper-Heir, Benjamin Peter

With the mountain pine beetle infestation beginning to wind down, attempting to quantify the amount of Non-Sufficiently-Restocked (NSR) land is one that has caused arguments with different estimates ranging from as high as 9.1 million hectares to as low as 240 thousand hectares. An analysis of this problem has concluded that there is not enough evidence, due to a lack of government surveys, to come up with a definitive number. This lack of evidence has lead to an unclear, and poorly carried out reforestation program, resulting in the lowest rates of planted seedlings in 20 years. This decline will severely hamper the long term growing volume in the provinces forest and is one which needs to be dealt with quickly. A province-wide inventory of all mountain pine beetle and other NSR must be carried out with funding from all levels of government and perhaps with the help of carbon credit revenue. Once this analysis has been completed a pointed silviculture strategy must drawn up, using criteria such as feasible access, site-index, cost, understory success, fertilization potential and hydrology concerns to create a realistic, provincial, management plan. Once this plan is created, further sources of revenue can be pursued with the ability to demonstrate that the problem is understood and that the money will be put to a targeted use with a reachable outcome. With the forest sector beginning to turn around and create revenue for the province once again, it is reasonable to expect that province would attempt to put some of this money back into managing this valuable resource.

Graduating Project

eng

2016-11-17

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/36462

UBCV

Undergraduate

DSpace