Forest Co-op Shoreline Forestry Project
This three-year, $1.26 million project, entitled "Can Boreal Forest Management Safely Emulate Natural Disturbance Patterns in Shoreline Forests?", was a collaborative applied science initiative designed to provide a reliable, science based assessment of environmental risks associated with shoreline forestry in the boreal forest management zone of Ontario. Assumptions of proposed revisions to Ontario’s Fish Management Guidelines for the Protection of Fish Habitat were tested with the design to facilitate rational, safe, sustainable shoreline forest management without harmful impacts to aquatic ecosystems. Regional field trials to measure terrestrial and potential aquatic ecosystem response to shoreline forestry were used.
A field guide to assess shoreline forestry management impacts, targeted for agencies interested in data collection, was one of the products of this project. Also, a custom database was developed to facilitate standardized data input from these surveys. Single page report summaries were generated by the database for each site.
While operational activities and data collection were completed in 2004, some data analysis and science transfer components of the project will not be finalized until early to mid-2005.