Long-term Silvicultural Research Sites: Promoting the Concept – Protecting the Investment

Foresters have long understood the need for long term studies of the response of forested ecosystems to forest management practices and our literature is peppered with references to such studies.When rotations are planned to exceed a human lifetime, it is generally understood that someone must undertake experiments that will benefit the succeeding generations.Canada has its share of long running studies, scattered across the country, but recently there has been an upsurge of long term effort.Ongoing concerns about the sustainability of forest practices in Canada have led to the establishment of more than 20 long term silvicultural research sites across Canada in the last ten years.As the need for information about Canada's forest practices increase the value of these long term research sites will grow.Some efforts at linking these sites to encourage the exchange of information on topics of mutual interest have taken place, particularly within the Canadian Forest Service with the FERNS network.But Jim Wood, a silvicultural researcher with the Canadian Forest Service and the original promoter of the Network, was aware that many studies were not captured within the network.On a visit to one of several new long term sites in British Columbia, sponsored by Forest Renewal BC funding, he broached the topic with Alan Vyse, a research forester with the B.C Forest Service.Together, they made further contacts and the concept of a workshop was born.The title of the workshop, "Long term silvicultural research sites: promoting the concept -protecting the investment," was selected to draw attention to two of the biggest problems associated with long term studies -encouraging managers to buy in at the start, and then keeping the project fires burning in the face of the vicissitudes of funding, events and careers.The papers in this special issue of The Forestry Chronicle are drawn from presentations given at the workshop, held in Victoria, B.C., October 25-28,1998.Speakers h m across Canada and from several other nations addressed both successes and failures pertaining to the day-to-day management of long term silvicultural research sites and the pitfalls of conducting interdisciplinary long term silvicultural research.Through a series of breakout sessions on data management, technology transfer, site promotion and establishing, marking and protecting the sites, delegates to the workshop identified: opportunities for interaction and co-operation between sites, methods of delivering information to end users, and opportunities to promote and sustain individual sites for long term values.The papers collected here are focused on issues related to the management and co-ordination of long term silvicultural research sites.Most are of a conceptual nature and deal with problems and opportunities rather than research results.Two keynote addresses provide an industrial perspective on research needs and a perspective on changing the theoretical basis for future silvicultural research, and thus the approach to project design and analysis.In Section 1, case studies illustrate the value of well-established sites for addressing a variety of long and short term issues.In Section 2, case studies illustrate some approaches to overcome current problems in the establishment