Research Forests are ideal places to conduct long or short term research. ALRF staff can help researchers by providing knowledge of the land area, access to management and research history, and student mentorship. Staff can alert field crews of known hazards in the field and provide information on road access and technical or methodological issues. We also have access to local contractors who can provide valuable skills, or other sources of data or knowledge relevant to the area. A detailed inventory of all active ALRF projects and their locations allows staff to minimize overlap between research sites and non-experimental forest operations.
Because of the research mandate of the ALRF tenure, there is a considerable amount of regulatory flexibility in our management. Consequently, ongoing operational activities can be easily customized to create research sites or to apply one-time or continuous treatments to answer certain research questions. We encourage projects that bring an experimental element to our regular forest management activities such as timber harvesting, inventories, surveys, environmental monitoring, trial re-measurements, planting, brushing, etc.
The Research Forest also has Research Natural Areas, which are not available for timber management, and are set aside to protect both ecologically unique and representative examples of the local forest. Establishing these units ensures that unharvested areas are always available for research.
ALRF works closely with other BC research forests. Faculty who wish to sample a variety of ecosystems in their research may consider placing study sites at more than one research forest which are located in Maple Ridge, Williams Lake, and Fort St. James BC.
The ALRF seed grant competition is also open to UNBC and UBC faculty conducting research at ALRF who need a little extra money to cover basic project costs or to leverage additional funding. This funding is strongly oriented toward projects that incorporate student research and training into its workplan. For more information about these grants, please contact us.
Peruse the ALRF list of project ideas for faculty and student research, and field or class projects.