Program Manager: Don
White
One of the key challenges for forest managers today
is the capacity to turn increasing amounts of data and a myriad of
technologies into valuable information and useful
tools—preferably in the same package. This is the mission of
Program One.
We recognise that forests are increasingly managed
for a range of products and purposes. These include not only
providing fibre and timber products but also water and carbon. We
also acknowledge that forest management occurs within a social
context. Consequently, we need to understand how to optimise forest
management and we must appreciate the effects of different
management approaches on more than one outcome or output.
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Scientists discussing yellowing symptoms
in a pine plantation
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Furthermore, as our national forest industries are
embracing new species planted in new environments where experience
is limited, we also face the uncertainties of a changing climate.
Our need to make robust predictions based on an understanding of
forest processes has never been greater.
If we are to successfully address this increased
complexity in our forests we must maximise the value that we can
derive from operating in an information-rich and technology-rich
age.
Due to all of these considerations, our research
effort in Program One focuses on questions that help us develop a
much deeper understanding of the forest estate. This includes how
particular site and tree characteristics affect growth and resource
use in both the short and long term. We are also exploring and
developing appropriate methods and economically viable technologies
that will allow us to better measure characteristics of interest,
to assess forest condition and to alert managers to changes in that
condition.
From these advances in process understanding and
through improved capacity to capture forest metrics and describe
forest condition over time, we will to be able to predict outcomes
and test scenarios that cannot be tested experimentally. Scenarios
of interest may explore responses to site factors such as soils and
topography, climatic variables such as temperature and rainfall,
stochastic events including pest or disease attack, or
silvicultural management such as thinning and pruning.
The primary research effort of Program One is being
conducted within appropriate modelling frameworks that will ensure
individual experiments and projects provide data and outputs that
are compatible across the breadth of the research effort. The
modelling approach provides a unifying context for the work, a
suitable method for further hypothesis formulation and testing, and
a robust and consistent structure from which to develop useful
outputs
Finally, and critically, models and modelling
outputs are being built into decision-support platforms that will
meet the needs of tomorrow’s forest managers. In this effort,
cross-program collaboration will be essential to the delivery of
useful tools to industry and other stakeholders.
Our program is structured into four research
projects—each project addresses one or more of the themes
described above:
