LandWeb Simulation Modelling

This is by far the most ambitious Healthy Landscapes project. The objective of LandWeb is to define historical NRV conditions at landscape scales across 140 million ha of the western boreal from spatially explicit simulation modelling. The output will provide NRV for landscape scale metrics such as seral-stage levels and old forest patch sizes.

One of the first research projects undertaken by the Healthy Landscapes Program remains today as one of the more complex. Originally, our partners were interested in fundamental questions such as the sizes of natural disturbances and historic levels and sizes of old forest. These seemingly simple questions required several layers of research to address.

Natural landscape mosaics that we see today (or 50 or 100 years ago) are the result of hundreds of years of wildfires interacting with soil, topography, climate, and tree species dynamics over time and space. Old forest is created over many decades, and thus we can only explain their patterns when we understand the causes. Unfortunately, we do not have detailed knowledge of natural landscapes from decades or centuries ago.

However, spatial modelling can create such data if we have three things:

1. reliable inputs,
2. the right model,
3. sound local knowledge of key disturbance elements such as fire sizes, fire severity, and species mortality rates.

In 2014, the Healthy Landscapes Program formed a partnership with the Canadian Forest Service at the Pacific Forestry Centre to develop the model. The framework in which LandWeb will be developed is called SpaDES (Spatially Discreet Event Simulator). SpaDES is actually not a model, but rather an innovative framework in which other models and modules can “talk” to each other. SpaDES is free, available on-line, and customized for each HLP partner with the LandWeb configuration.

Selected Resources

The following reports describe the process of developing these project elements:

1. Assessing Forest Age Data in Foothills and Mountain Landscapes of Alberta
2. Landscape-Level Fire Activity on Foothills and Mountain Landscapes of Alberta
3. Patch and Event Sizes on Foothills and Mountain Landscapes of Alberta