Climate change is impacting forest health and productivity. Trees will be poorly adapted to their future environment if we stick to the status quo practice of using seed from local populations for reforestation. The goals of this project are: (1) to use genomic tools combined with experiments to testing trees’ resistance to heat, cold, drought stress, and disease to develop better reforestation options for Douglas-fir, lodgepole pine, western larch and jack pine, and (2) assess whether these forest adaptation strategies and changes to reforestation policies for Canada’s public forests are acceptable to the public and other stakeholders and end-users. The knowledge obtained from this project will inform tree breeding and reforestation in rapidly changing climates, by identifying opportunities for improving forest health through, as well as risks from, assisted migration.
ClosedForestry
POPCAN: Genetic improvement of poplar trees as a Canadian bioenergy feedstock
FunderGenome Canada - 2010 Large Scale Applied Research Project Competition
CompetitionGenome Canada - 2010 Large Scale Applied Research Project Competition
Project Lead(s)/Co-Lead(s)Shawn Mansfield (University of British Columbia)