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Sites across Canada
HEADLINE NEWS !
Formal DIVERSE launch
After years of preparations, meetings, agreements and coordination between various partners, the DIVERSE project was finally launched in April 2024.
It has been a long journey to get here, 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 Grants, which encourages Canadian university researchers to collaborate with partners organization outside academia.
The project made its official launch April the 11th, at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) in Gatineau (QC). The launch included a panel that consisted of project theme leads (Pinno and Nelson) and project partners (Girard and Tallman) who discussed the various challenges and opportunities currently facing Canada’s forest and forest sector.
We witnessed fruitful exchanges and reflections that gave everyone a taste as to what the DIVERSE project is about! If you missed the launch, you can access the recording here, or check our other post concerning it.
Thanks to everyone involved in the launch – This is just the beginning!
DIVERSE new Western Coordinator
New DIVERSE Western Coordinator: We have hired Kathryn Knodel who will be based at the University of Alberta, as announced in a previous post!
Kathryn is very excited to join the DIVERSE team as the Western Coordinator. She has a BSc in Biology from The King’s University in in Edmonton, which she completed just over a year ago in April 2023. Her undergrad was where she first discovered her passion for research and an interest in forest ecology and conservation. Before joining the DIVERSE team, Kathryn worked as a Research Coordinator for the Alberta Canola Producers Commission, where she oversaw research project funding and programs.
Though she now lives in Edmonton, she was raised in Vancouver, where her passion for the environment and nature first took hold through regular hikes and camping trips throughout BC with her family.
COMMUNICATION UPDATES
DIVERSE webinar series
The brand-new DIVERSE webinar series kicked off on June 20th, with a presentation from Dr. Christian Messier, Principal Investigator of DIVERSE. These webinars are aimed at increasing engagement across project partners and collaborators. The webinar will provide an opportunity to hear from various perspectives on what they are already up to that connects with DIVERSE. For this first webinar, Dr. Messier presented an overview of the DIVERSE project that included the scientific rationale for addressing global stressors through the Functional Complex Network approach. A recording of the webinar can be accessed here.
If you are interested in listening in on the next webinar and want to be added to the distribution list reach out to us at diverseproject@uqo.ca.
DIVERSE Fact sheet
We have developed a two-page DIVERSE Fact Sheet that provides a concise overview of the project and each of the six research themes. It was developed in both French and English. Copies of the Fact Sheet are Available Upon Request and will soon be available on this website
DIVERSE in Sweden at the International Union of Forest Research Organizations Congress (IUFRO)
Dr. Charles Nock (University of Alberta) gave a talk on DIVERSE on June 24, 2024, at the 26th International Union of Forest Research Organization (IUFRO) World Congress in Stockholm, Sweden. This was the largest ever worldwide gathering of forest researchers and DVIERSE was a part of it. It attracted 4,300 delegates and featured 3,500 presentations, 70+ showcased innovations, and much more.
ADMINISTRATIVE UPDATES
Collaboration agreements
In order to formalize the DIVERSE Project collaboration agreement, DIVERSE support staff are working diligently with UQO (Lead University) to complete the agreements with all 24 project partners and 6 universities. The final version of the agreement should be ready in the coming weeks.
SCIENCE UPDATES
DIVERSE in the field
Last month, DIVERSE researchers were out in the field with partners from West Fraser and UBC Forestry evaluating potential silviculture research sites as part of Theme 6 of the project.. In this part of the world (Sundre, AB) where Chinook winds are common, hot and dry south-facing slopes are of particular interest. Theme 6 lead, Dr. Brad Pinno (University of Alberta) has begun identifying project partners and installation sites across a subset of the 22 DIVERSE Project sites. At each of the research sites, a local steeringcommittee will be establish to discuss and address the potential operational challenges and research questions to be tackled over the next five years.
DIVERSE leaders in Chilliwack, British Columbia
Drs. Christian Messier (UQO) and Harry Nelson (UBC, Theme 5 Lead) met with Kevin Webber, Forestry Manager and Keri Ardell, Executive Manager (Ts’elxwéyeqw’s Tribe Management Ltd, DIVERSE Project Partner) in Chilliwack, British Columbia. They discussed how each of the six themes of DIVERSE will be implemented over the next 5 years for their site and how data and information will be exchanged. They also had a quick tour of the forest and territory being managed by the Ts’elxweyeqw Tribe
FunTree Collaborative Campaign
The FunTree Collaborative Campaign “Extensive measurements of functional traits on North American tree species” aims to study intraspecific variability of some traits over an environmental gradient to fill knowledge gaps on species sensitivity to drought and regeneration failure after disturbance.
The data collected:
- Will enable a comparative ecology study of species sensitivity to these two factors.
- Will be integrated into fundamental ecophysiology projects which aim, within others, at better understanding the links between wood density and hydraulic and anatomical traits.
- Will be assembled into a high-quality dataset of traits linked to drought sensitivity and regeneration failure; this will be built up in such a way as to facilitate its integration into models (such as LANDIS II) and thus improve forecasts, and
- Will subsequently be imported into the TOPIC and TRY databases to enhance future projects.
FunTree is part of Theme 1 and relies on the expertise of several researchers for the methodological design and on the collaboration of multiple partners for the field sampling. The campaign is led by Dr. Isabelle Aubin (Canadian Forest Service) and Dr. Morgane Dendoncker (UQO), supported by a group of key collaborators (Drs. Audrey Maheu (UQO), Julie Messier (University of Waterloo), and Morgane Urli (UQAM)) and in partnership with the Centre d’Étude de la Forêt (https://www.cef-cfr.ca/). We also have some 50 partners (from the DIVERSE network and elsewhere), spread across Canada and the North-Eastern USA, who will be collecting data in the field during the summer of 2024.
That’s it for this quarterly update ! We hope that you’ll keep following the evolution of the project through our future posts and updates. Stay tuned !
