Forest Carbon Storage in Southwest British Columbia: a remote-sensing approach to scale from individual trees to the landscape level

Addressing the harmful effects of climate change presents an urgent challenge for society. The intern will assess the amount of carbon storage within the forests of southwestern British Columbia in order to facilitate carbon storage accounting. To do this, the intern will conduct forest inventories to measure the diameter and height and identify the species of each tree within dozens of forest plots, and will apply this information to well-defined forestry equations to determine the biomass and carbon of each tree. The intern will then use fine-resolution satellite images and lidar data (to give the height of trees) and apply statistics to these data to determine the amount of carbon in each tree. The intern will characterize the accuracy of our predicted values and apply the model to produce a map of carbon storage across the study area. This map will provide a baseline from which to identify changes in carbon storage from forest fires, harvesting, and other forest disturbances. This map will help the partner organization and local governments determine the contribution of forests towards efforts to reduce the harmful effects of climate change.

Faculty Supervisor:

Mathieu Bourbonnais;Erin Crockett

Student:

Partner:

BC Conservation Foundation

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Other services (except public administration); Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

The University of British Columbia - Okanagan

Program: