Quantitative methods for identifying ecological benchmarks in Canada's boreal forest
Dates
Year
2009
Citation
Anderson, Lee G. G., 2009, Quantitative methods for identifying ecological benchmarks in Canada's boreal forest: University of Alberta (Canada).
Summary
The boreal region in Canada contains a quarter of the world's remaining frontier forest, of which the majority is unprotected and publicly owned. This offers Canada an unprecedented conservation opportunity. The establishment of new reserves, designed to function as ecological benchmarks, could contribute to conservation of the boreal forest, and support more sustainable economic development by enabling adaptive resource management. I developed quantitative methods for identifying ecological benchmarks in the Canadian boreal forest that met ecologically-based size and connectivity requirements, as well as minimum intactness criteria. This involved (1) approximating the size required for ecological benchmarks to incorporate regionally-calibrated [...]
Summary
The boreal region in Canada contains a quarter of the world's remaining frontier forest, of which the majority is unprotected and publicly owned. This offers Canada an unprecedented conservation opportunity. The establishment of new reserves, designed to function as ecological benchmarks, could contribute to conservation of the boreal forest, and support more sustainable economic development by enabling adaptive resource management. I developed quantitative methods for identifying ecological benchmarks in the Canadian boreal forest that met ecologically-based size and connectivity requirements, as well as minimum intactness criteria. This involved (1) approximating the size required for ecological benchmarks to incorporate regionally-calibrated fire regimes in southern Yukon Territory; (2) developing a Benchmark Builder software tool that constructs ecological benchmarks with viable configurations along hydrological networks; and (3) applying the Benchmark Builder to identify ecological benchmarks in southwestern Yukon Territory and northeastern British Columbia, incorporating both existing reserves and proposed future developments. In part (1), mean minimum dynamic reserve size was ∼410,000 ha and I observed linear relationships between benchmark size and fire sizes across study areas In part (3), I successfully applied the software developed in part 2 to identify areas that may be important for establishing ecological benchmarks in the Yukon/BC study area, including the Donjek River watershed, Atlin Provincial Park and Recreation Area, and Kusawa Lake Natural Environment Park. The general conceptual framework and software tools developed to support this work have broad applications to the identification of ecological benchmarks in other areas of the world where significant intact areas remain. Elements of this study were conducted as part of the Canadian BEACONs Project (Boreal Ecosystems Analysis for Conservation Networks) at the University of Alberta.
