Conserving woodland caribou habitat while maintaining timber yield: A graph theory approach

• Main Authors: Ruppert, Jonathan Leo William, Fortin, Marie-Josée, Gunn, Eldon A., Martell, David L.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: NRC Research Press (a division of Canadian Science Publishing) 2016
• Subjects: Canada; Rangifer tarandus
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/72442; http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjfr-2015-0431

The fragmentation and loss of old-growth forest has led to the decline of many forest dwelling species that depend on old-growth forest as habitat. Emblematic of this issue in many areas of the managed boreal forest in Canada, is the threatened woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou). We develop a methodology to help determine when and how timber can be harvested in order to best satisfy both industrial timber supply and woodland caribou habitat requirements. To start, we use least-cost paths based on graph theory, to determine the configuration of woodland caribou preferred habitat patches. We then developed a heuristic procedure to schedule timber harvesting based on a trade-off between merchantable wood volume and the remaining amount of habitat and its connectivity during a planning cycle. Our heuristic can attain 84% of the potential woodland caribou habitat that would be available in the absence of harvesting, at the end of a 100-year planning horizon. Interestingly, this is more than the current plan (50%) and a harvesting plan that targets high volume stands (32%). Our results indicate that our heuristic procedure (i.e., an ecologically-tuned optimization approach) may better direct industrial activities to improve old growth habitat while maintaining specified timber production levels. The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author.