History

This forestry network emerged as a project under the National Program on Complex Data Structures. Forestry researchers, statisticians, mathematicians, computer scientists and a variety of other researchers were brought together to discuss challenging quantitative issues facing forestry and to develop new tools to address these challenges.

Through extensive communication and collaboration between researchers across several disciplines working across several provinces as well as nationally across a variety of forestry agencies in Canada, the idea of forming a national forestry network to focus on these concerns emerged. GEOIDE became a major partner for this work and is currently a principal supporter. The network's main focus is on the development of innovative analytic tools to aid in the study and management of Canada's forests: wildfires, ecology, local fire histories. The network seeks an understanding of the changes in diversity and structure of forests as a consequence of fire regime and landscape change.

This project is important in view of changes in fire regimes and forest ecology because of past fire and forest management practices and climate change. Our team also has international connections, principally with researchers from Australia, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Spain and the United States.