Prince George has a new forestry mind in town, a man who's main goal is to mix it up in the realm of Mixedwood ecology.
Che Elkin, the new chair of Mixedwood Ecology at the University of Northern B.C., is still in the early stages of launching his long-term research that will tackle how climate, landscape disturbances, and forest management practices interact.
The goal? Predict how forests will change under environmental, economic, and social conditions decades in the future.
Mixedwood forests are exactly what the name implies: a mix of evergreen and broadleaf trees like Aspen and Birch, as well as other plant species.
"They're very complex," said Elkin. "When we think of forestry, we often think of single tree and single age forest."
Historically, that has been the case - foresting landscapes that have the same wood species that are roughly the same age. But increasingly Mixedwood forests are becoming economically important resource in B.C.
"Basically the world in many ways is dominated by Mixedwood systems," Elkins said.
He will examine how individual trees grow, how they interact with each other and surrounding plant species and how that biological diversity is affected by environmental and social factors.
Elkin said it helps that forestry is an old science, one where scientists like him can draw on data tracking these changes over the years.
"In some ways we have really good models on how how forests respond."
But his work seeks to predict how the systems will change as many as 50 to 100 years from now. To get there, Elkin works with economists as well as academics in the social sciences, applying their projections and data to his models.
His research exists at a nexus of ecological, economic and social drivers, he said, with a goal of informing forest planning and management to create environments that are both economically and ecologically resilient.
Elkin also does his own empirical research, tracking how trees respond today and next year and the year after. To that end, part of his new role will be to find nearby forests that can be expected to remain untouched as his study subject for decades to come.
"The longer term the better. These are really long lived systems," he said.
Elkin came to Prince George last month by way of Switzerland, where he was researching Mixedwood ecology at the country's oldest forestry program. Almost 10 years ago Elkin, a Saskatchewan native, spent time in B.C.'s forests while completing his PhD looking at habitat selection and the mountain pine beetle.
"In many ways this is a homecoming," he said.
