The Times They Are A-Changin’: Reforestation in an Era of Climate Change

About this Presentation

Our understanding of the suitability of tree species to current site conditions is
based largely on the “what was” of historic normal climate. In an era of rapid climate warming and weirding, a conservative reforestation approach that simply uses local species and populations may represent a risky strategy by establishing forests that become increasingly maladapted through time. In this presentation, the focus is on the Climate Change Informed Species Selection tool, a model which projects the suitability trajectory of tree species out to the year 2100 to account for both the moving environmental goal posts of climate change and the inherent uncertainty of a climate-changed future. Particularly in the Subboreal Spruce and northern Interior Cedar-Hemlock zones,  the assisted range expansion of non-local species is indicated. Some local field studies examining non-local species trials will also be discussed.

About Will MacKenzie

Will is a research ecologist with the Ministry of Forests with a primary focus on the development of the provincial Biogeoclimatic Ecosystem Classification (BEC). He started his career in 1994 working on a provincial wetland classification and reconstructing the provincial classification analysis before progressively moving into the role of provincial BEC correlator.   Will has worked in every biogeoclimatic zone in the province building the classification of both forests and non-timber ecosystems. Since 2016, he has applied this field experience in building machine-learning models that project BEC for climate change adaptation and for predictive high-resolution mapping of ecosystems.