Forests

Drone-based technology remotely assesses health of trees impacted by climate change

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 24 May 2022 16:54:40 +0000

Drone-based technology remotely assesses health of trees impacted by climate change

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 05/24/2022 - 12:54

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The Ensminger Lab's drone flight team has developed a technology that remotely assesses photosynthetic phenology and plant fitness (photo courtesy of Ensminger Lab)

Tanya Rohrmoser

Topic

Breaking Research

Conservation

Biology

Climate Change

drones

Environment

Forests

Research and Innovation

Sustainability

U of T Mississauga

Canada has nearly 362 million hectares of forest, but climate change is negatively impacting tree health and productivity. Trees planted today need to withstand future climate instability.

Enter Ingo Ensminger, an associate professor of biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and an innovative new technology that could provide further insights into tree health. Ensminger’s lab studies plant-environment interactions and the impact of climate change on metabolism and photosynthesis of plants from molecular to leaf, species and ecosystem level.

Ingo Ensminger

Ensminger and his team have developed a drone-based technology, dubbed the FastPheno project, that remotely assesses photosynthetic phenology and plant fitness.

“Most people who use drones in trees and forests try to measure height and the size of the canopy, they use drones for inventories,” he says. “Our goal is different – we try to assess health and fitness, and overall performance as indicated by the ability of vegetation to remove CO2 from the atmosphere when they photosynthesize and produce biomass.”

Ensminger was recently awarded $4.7 million in funding for his FastPheno project by Genome Canada, an independent, federally funded not-for-profit.

“It is very rewarding to receive funding to develop and implement tools that will hopefully be used to help tree breeders and forest practitioners to identify trees that are resilient to climate change,” says Ensminger, who anticipates the tools will be used for tree improvement programs or to set targets for forest conservation and management.

Genome Canada’s Genomic Applications Partnership Program brings new applied genomics solutions to issues facing Canadians, and supports collaborations in forestry and other sectors.

The unique technology enables them to distinguish the performance of thousands of trees, and researchers can use the approach to detect drought stress control on photosynthesis in natural forests.

“All this is based on the optical fingerprint of vegetation,” Ensminger explains. “This fingerprint is derived by measurements of leaf spectral reflectance. Leaf spectral reflectance is highly variable, and it can be used as a plant health indicator, because it changes upon exposure to drought stress or heat stress.” The fingerprint is also species-specific, and hence future work in Ensminger’s lab will also explore how species can be distinguished to monitor biodiversity.

When it comes to tree breeding and forest conservation, the ability to distinguish trees that perform well during drought and heat is incredibly useful — complementing genomic selection with adaptive traits could help produce trees resilient to future climate in Canada.

Simply put, Ensminger believes, it could transform Canada's forest sector.

“Outcomes have been very promising,” Ensminger reports. “We can distinguish trees that are water-stressed from well-watered trees, we can assess how photosynthetic activity varies over the course of the year, and in large forest stands we can identify trees that perform well and distinguish those from unhealthy trees or trees that are stressed.”

Ensminger’s technology is fast, reliable and cost-effective compared to vegetation monitoring that relies on visual inspections and manual measurements. New research enabled through FastPheno now aims to apply the drone-based phenotyping approach at a large scale and explore how reliably it can be used across forests in Ontario and Quebec to monitor the health and fitness of individual trees.

If successful, FastPheno could create cost savings of $540 million per year and reduce assessment times from a matter of weeks to hours – and it can be transferred from forest vegetation to applications in agriculture, conservation and biodiversity studies.

St. Casimir experimental forest in Quebec, a field site where Ensminger and his team do a lot of their drone work (photo courtesy of Éric Dussault, Natural Resources Canada)

What’s next for Ensminger’s team? During their drone flights, they’re collecting an enormous amount of data – and now it’s a matter of processing and analyzing it. They’re collaborating with robotics experts to improve field data collection and will be developing tools to automate the process of image analysis and pixel classification using machine learning and AI technologies.

“We also aim to develop software and web-interfaces that provide users access so that not just researchers, but a wide range of end-users have access to the data produced through this approach,” he says.

“This is an exhilarating time for genomics,” noted Rob Annan, Genome Canada President and CEO, following a federal announcement of funding in March for FastPheno and other projects. “The knowledge, tools and technologies it is generating are driving innovation in traditional sectors and helping them achieve green growth, as well as improving the health and quality of life of Canadians.”

Ensminger’s project will complement the genomic selection research and operational programs of Natural Resources Canada and the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks of Quebec.

U of T researchers to co-lead national Wildland Fire Research Network

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 19:31:06 +0000

U of T researchers to co-lead national Wildland Fire Research Network

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 07/08/2020 - 15:31

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Smoke billows into the sky near Fort McMurray, Alta. in May 2016 (photo by Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images)

Topic

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Research & Innovation

Two University of Toronto professors are among the scientists leading the Wildland Fire Research Network – a new, Canada-wide coalition of seven forest-fire researchers at six different academic institutions.

Professor Emeritus David Martell and Associate Professor Patrick James, both of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Landscape, Architecture, and Design's forestry department, have been tapped to play key roles in the new network, which aims to increase Canada's expertise in wildland fire science.

As part of the initiative, James and Martell will have access to new funding earmarked specifically for the purpose of training new master's, PhD, and post-doctoral students in forest-fire research techniques. The federal government said it would be partnering with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to provide $5 million for the creation the Wildland Fire Research Network.

“I have three new PhD students who have already signed on, and there will be more in the future,” James says. “Without this grant I wouldn't have had the financial means to take on these students. It's a huge boost to our forestry group.”

James is a specialist in landscape-scale forest disturbance processes, including the destruction wrought by the spruce budworm and the mountain pine beetle – insects whose fecundity and voracious feeding habits make them capable of killing vast swaths of Canadian forests (the dry, dead trees they leave behind can act as tinder when exposed to fire).

Martell is co-director, with Mike Wotton, of the Fire Management Systems Laboratory. He studies new techniques for detecting and managing forest fires.

An increase in the number of trainees isn't the only benefit for the U of T researchers. “It's not just about increasing the number of students,” Martell says. “It's about increasing the breadth of expertise of people who are interested in fires.”

By drawing on the varied backgrounds and institutional connections of the network's participants, students will be able to study forest fires from the perspectives of different disciplines, including ecology, physics, chemistry and the social sciences.

Students from across the new research network will also have opportunities to meet each other and form valuable professional connections. “The most important thing we're going to do is have 'summer schools,’” Martell says. “We’re going to bring our graduate students together. Students will make presentations, and we'll bring in professors to give talks – but, most importantly, the students will start to network with each other.”

The end result will be a new generation of highly qualified researchers and professionals with the skills, knowledge and interpersonal connections necessary to protect Canada's forests and forest-adjacent communities for decades to come.

The infusion of money into Canadian forest-fire research comes at an opportune moment: With climate change continuing unabated, scientists expect forest fires to become more frequent and more severe. According to federal government statistics, there are approximately 8,000 fires in Canadian forests each year.

Although fires can be a natural and healthy part of a forest's lifecycle, they pose a threat to human safety when they approach what's known as the wildland-urban interface – the border between the natural world and dense human settlements. Recent disasters like the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire and the 2011 Slave Lake wildfire have demonstrated the potential costs of a lack of investment in forest-fire research and control.

“This grant is a response to those events, and a recognition that we need more people to work on these problems,” Martell says.

Here's the list of researchers who will be leading the Wildland Fire Research Network:

Mike Flannigan, University of Alberta

Lori Daniels, University of British Columbia

Laura Chasmer, University of Lethbridge

Douglas Woolford, Western University

Mike Waddington, McMaster University

Patrick James, University of Toronto

David Martell, University of Toronto

Canadian and European boreal forests differ but neither is immune to climate change, says U of T researcher

ullahnor — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 20:38:13 +0000

Canadian and European boreal forests differ but neither is immune to climate change, says U of T researcher

ullahnor Fri, 11/11/2016 - 15:38

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Boreal forest near Kluane Lake Research Station in Yukon (photo by Sophia Lavergne)

Don Campbell

Author legacy

Don Campbell

Topic

Rudy Boonstra has been doing field research in Canada’s north for more than 40 years.

Working mostly out of the Arctic Institute’s Kluane Lake Research Station in Yukon, the U of T Scarborough biology professor has become intimately familiar with Canada’s vast and unique boreal forest ecosystem.

But it was during a trip to Finland in the mid-1990s to help a colleague with field research that he began to think long and hard about why the boreal forest there differed so dramatically from its Canadian cousin. This difference was crystallized by follow-up trips to Norway.

“Superficially they look the same. Both are dominated by coniferous trees with similar low density deciduous trees like aspen. But that’s where the similarities end,” he says.

The real differences are most obvious on the ground, notes Boonstra. In Canada, the ground is dominated by tall shrubs like willow and birch but in the northwestern European forests found in Norway, Finland and Sweden the ground is dominated by dwarf shrubs like bilberry.

“The reason for the difference comes down to different climates,” he says.

It also goes without saying that global warming will have an effect on vegetation and the species that rely on the boreal forest, adds Boonstra.

“The data is still coming in but there are indications that this ecosystem is shifting and it could potentially be a massive shift,” he says, pointing to changes in the global carbon cycle and the predator-prey dynamics.

Boreal forest covers an incredible 50 per cent of Canada’s land mass and has evolved quite differently from the boreal forests of Northwestern Europe say Boonstra, who co-authored the book Ecosystem Dynamics of the Boreal Forest.

The winters in the Canadian boreal forest are drier and 15 to 20C colder, with snow that is soft and shallow. In Northwestern Europe the winter is more mild and wet by comparison with deep snow that packs harder. The milder European winters are driven mainly by westerly winds from North America that dip into the Caribbean and carry warm air across the Atlantic.

The difference in climate means the plant and animal species in both forests have evolved along two very different paths. The Canadian system is dominated by the extreme cold tolerant tall shrubs and the 10-year snowshoe hare and Canadian lynx cycle.

On the other hand, the forests in northwestern Europe are dominated by cold intolerant dwarf shrubs and a three to four-year cycle of small rodent and weasels that live below the snow. It also has a higher density of larger animals like Moose.

“Predators have evolved to the prey, and the prey have evolved to the vegetation in both places,” adds Boonstra.

Boonstra and his colleagues looked at a host of other potential factors to explain the differences between these forests including human activity, density of large mammals and other predators, but the deciding factor came down to climate.

The research, which included collaboration from researchers across Canada and Norway, was published in the journal BioScience and received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Norwegian Science Council.

Boreal forests are important ecological zones because they cover 11 per cent of the Earth’s total land surface and make up 25 per cent of the Earth’s closed canopy forests, which are continuous, uninterrupted forest systems.

These forests play a key role in the global carbon cycle that allows the Earth to be capable of sustaining life.

“There’s no question that a shift in snow consistency and temperature will impact this immense ecosystem,” adds Boonstra.