Modelling the distribution of advance regeneration in lodgepole pine stands in the Central Interior of British Columbia.

The recent mountain-pine beetle outbreak in the Central Interior of British Columbia is leaving unsalvaged stands with minimal silvicultural treatment, raising questions about their ability to regenerate and the implications of this uncertainty to future timber supply and habitat values. No system currently exists to predict, on a landscape level, which pine stands will have adequate stocking of advance regeneration suitable for release upon canopy death. My research takes a ground-truthed, landscape-level approach to modelling, predicting, mapping, and prioritizing stands for salvage or rehabilitation. The resulting model, derived from recursive partitioning of data from 964 sample plots, created a landscape level output with a predictive accuracy of 78%. Across the Sub-Boreal Spruce study area, I estimate that 58% of mature pine-leading stands (approximately 840,000 ha) are likely or very likely to be stocked with at least 600 stems/ha of living understory trees. --Leaf ii.