IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v2y2010i8p2403-2423d9119.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Striving for Sustainability and Resilience in the Face of Unprecedented Change: The Case of the Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreak in British Columbia

Author

Listed:
  • Philip J. Burton

    (Canadian Forest Service & University of Northern British Columbia, 3333 University Way, Prince George, British Columbia V2N 4Z9, Canada)

Abstract

A massive insect outbreak in the public forests of central British Columbia (Canada) poses a serious challenge for sustainable forest management planning. Tree mortality caused by natural disturbances has always been a part of wild and managed forests, but climate change is accentuating the uncertainty around such losses. Policy responses to accelerate overall timber harvesting levels to prevent further tree mortality and to aggressively salvage value from dead wood before it deteriorates can be disruptive and even counter-productive in the long run. Current alternatives are to strategically redirect existing timber harvesting quotas to the most vulnerable areas, minimize overall uplifts in cutting activity, prolong the period over which harvested timber can be processed, avoid the harvesting of mixed species stands or those with good advance regeneration, employ more partial cutting or “selective logging” techniques, and relax standards for acceptable species and inter-tree spacing during post-disturbance stand recovery. At the same time, careful attention to species composition and evolving landscape risk profiles may facilitate adaptation to anticipated climate change and reduce vulnerability to future disturbances. Harvest levels must be set conservatively over the full planning horizon if it is important to assure continuity of the timber supply with few disruptions to regional socio-economics and less stress to ecosystems. Broader lessons in sustainability include the option to emphasize persistence, continuity and flexibility over the long term, though at the expense of maximized production and full resource utilization in the short term.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip J. Burton, 2010. "Striving for Sustainability and Resilience in the Face of Unprecedented Change: The Case of the Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreak in British Columbia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 2(8), pages 1-21, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:2:y:2010:i:8:p:2403-2423:d:9119
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/8/2403/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/8/2403/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shangyi Zhou & Weilin Xu, 2018. "Interpreting the Inheritance Mechanism of the Wu Yue Sacred Mountains in China Using Structuralist and Semiotic Approaches," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-16, June.
    2. Roman Réh & Ľuboš Krišťák & Miloš Hitka & Nadežda Langová & Pavol Joščák & Miloš Čambál, 2019. "Analysis to Improve the Strength of Beds Due to the Excess Weight of Users in Slovakia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-17, January.
    3. Anna Żemła-Siesicka & Urszula Myga-Piątek, 2021. "A Landscape Persistence Assessment of Częstochowa Upland: A Case Study of Ogrodzieniec, Poland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-17, June.
    4. Slavec, Ana & Hoeben, Annechien D. & Moreno-Torres, Miguel & Primožič, Lea & Stern, Tobias, 2023. "When intentions do not matter: Climate change mitigation and adaptation innovations in the Forest-based sector," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:2:y:2010:i:8:p:2403-2423:d:9119. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.