Phase II : International Partnerships with Canada & Mexico
A collaboration between Academia and Governments from Mexico, the United States, and Canada is enabling developments towards an improved understand of disturbance and recovery characteristics on a continental basis.
Plot-based National forest inventories (NFI)have recently been completed by both Canada and Mexico in order to systematicly monitor and report, as well as support national carbon accounting activities (see this). The USFS FIA is primarily resposible for forging the new collaborative relationships, providing a forum for technical exchange that will improve the consistency of carbon data available for the continent, and ultimately, help lead to an increased understanding of the forest disturbance and regrowth dynamics in the North American Carbon budget.
To the North
FIGURE: The Red cubes on this Map shows the possible selections for development of LTSS in Canada. Five of these sites would be devloped by NAFD, the other by CFS.
As one would expect, the dominant disturbance regimes, the extent of forests, and the nature of the forest recovery vary not only by political jurisdiction, but as a function of climatic and biological factors. For instance, in Canada anthropogenic changes related to urbanization, forestry, and agricultural land uses are located in conjunction to access. More northern forested areas are subject to large and often uncontrolled fires. Southern locations in Canada, especially near the coasts have high productivity and can regenerate rapidly, more northern forest areas typically regenerate more slowly. As a result, we propose a phased investigation and implementation in support of the NACP supported project, whereby we initially focus on a single ecoregion to determine the nature and expected rates of recovery and disturbance for us to aid inproject development and planning. Based upon the insights gleaned from this initial focused effort, we plan to undertake a Canada-wide sample-based implementation.
To the South
FIGURE: The Blue cubes on this Map shows the possible selections for development of LTSS in Mexico. All of these sites would be devloped by NAFD, with collaboration from CONAFOR.
The Mexican governemt has recently made a dramatic investiment in a standardized National Forest Inventory (NFI), very similar to those in the US and Canada. The CONAFOR (Comisíon Nacional Forestal) is helping to prepare these data for use in carbon studies.