Book Description

This study modelled the risk of fire at the stand and forest level to aid management decisions on the effect of such occurrences on annual allowable cut and future timber supplies; determined the frequency of large-scale insect and disease occurrences, and derived a model to assess their impact on the present and future forest yields; and tested, reviewed, and modified the fire, insect and disease, and other risk factor models for application over boreal forest ecoregions in western Canada. The program involved probabilistic (a preliminary version of the FOrestry RIsk Model (FORIM) based on Hinton leasehold and East Slopes fire risk data), deterministic (FORMAN model selected, modified, and tested for impacts in the Footner Lake and the Peace River volume sampling regions in northern Alberta), and dynamic (Markov decision support model applied to optimal forest management strategies for the Peace River and Footner Lake forests in northwestern Alberta) modelling approaches to give a comparative assessment of their merits.