Our team has extensive experience developing and integrating numerous SpaDES
models simulating forest vegetation dynamics, wildfire, insect disturbance, and wildlife populations, to inform decision making for land management and species at risk.
Boreal ecosystem forecasts
We have been working with Natural Resources Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada to implement various simulation components to inform forest, species, and land management under changing future conditions, as part of the Western Boreal Initiative (https://wbi.predictiveecology.org/).
Implemented using the SpaDES
toolkit, we have been evaluating the cumulative effects of wildfire, key pests, and anthropogenic disturbances, and climate change on forest values.
Mountain pine beetle spread forecasts
Predicting the outbreak and spread dynamics of this insect in Alberta and Saskatchewan jack pine forests, to evaluate control measures to mitigate a potentially devastating loss of forest habitat and timber supply.
The core model, implemented with the SpaDES
toolkit, can be integrated with other forest succession, wildfire, and other models to inform broader-scale land management.
Historic and future ranges of variability
These models integrate several forest succession and wildfire simulation components using the SpaDES
toolkit.
Ongoing work explores model dynamics, sensitivity, and further refinements for multiple study regions within western Canada.
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