3, 2, 1…DIVERSE Project, Launching!

Featured image: DIVERSE Project Leadership Team (C. Nock, B. Pinno, C. Messier, K. Solarik). Source: UQO

There it is: after years of preparations, meetings, agreements and coordination between many various partners, the DIVERSE project was finally launched on April 2024.

It has a been a long journey to get there, as is often the case with large, inter-disciplinary, inter-provincial and inter-university projects such as DIVERSE. In fact, the project is currently one of the largest ever funded by the NSERC “Alliance” funding, which bridges the research of Canadian university researchers with partners outside of the academic sector. As such, it’s hard to describe the amount of bureaucracy and coordination that goes on in building a coherent research project across so many entities and individuals.

The project made its official launch Thursday, April the 11^th at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) in Gatineau (QC). It was followed by a panel discussion about the challenges that Canadian forests will face in the future. We witnessed fruitful exchanges and reflections that gave everyone a taste as to what the DIVERSE project is about! The recording of that event can be seen with this link https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LrwSXch4kJePlHHZsvRH8TfCLpmAr6-H/view?usp=drive_link 

This is just the beginning, as we now embark on a great adventure to change the way we manage forests in Canada. But behind a such a large goal will be the individual work of many students, researchers, coordinators, communicators and partners that will work together to ask the right questions, and find the right answers needed for the project. And while the headlines might reflect the big ideas, trends or generality that the DIVERSE project will generate, we’ll also try to communicate the finer details of what we’re doing and the stories of those working on the project.

This is just the beginning and thank you to everyone involved!