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142 BCBusiness july 2015 MaRTin Dee used to be that climate change was a nagging but distant con- cern for British Columbians, spurred by pictures of stranded polar bears and the sinking islands of Tuvalu. Then came the images that brought the devastation home: vast swaths of our iconic B.C. forests laid to waste by the mountain pine beetle. With the infestation mostly behind us now, Lower Mainland residents might be forgiven for dismissing it as just another blip in the news cycle. Mother Nature has proven resilient; those shocking swaths of red soon faded to black, and the tracts of forest are already filling in as new seedlings take root. But it wasn't just a few isolated strands of a minor tree species that were hit by the beetle. Eighteen-million hectares, one-third of the province's 55-million hectares of forest, were affected. What's more, experts believe the infestation—which peaked in 2007 and has now for the most part subsided—was not just a one-time aberration but a taste of the future devastation that global warming has in store for the forests of B.C. "Nature is full of surprises, and climate change is leading to more of those surprises," says John Innes, dean of the UBC faculty of forestry and leader of the sustainable forest management laboratory, which, among other things, studies the impact of climate change on forest ecosystems. We aren't likely to see another pine beetle infestation, Innes says, but that's hardly reason for complacency. It was a series of unusually warm winters that enabled that infestation, and there's no knowing what the next climate anomaly will be and what havoc it will wreak on our forests. "There is a likelihood of increased mortal- ity of trees associated with climate change, and we're looking into that as much as we can," Innes notes, "but how do you fore- cast extreme events in the far future? And it tends to be these extreme events that cause the problems: a storm, a hurricane, a particularly severe winter." Whatever that next weather anomaly is, it could trigger a new pest infestation, the introduction of a new disease or a catastrophic wildfire. Or it could be something we can't possibly anticipate. The experts entrusted with overseeing B.C.'s forests are not sitting by idly waiting to see what catastrophe strikes next. In a bold move aimed at helping our forests adapt to the climates of tomorrow, the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations—responsible for overseeing the 95 per cent of B.C. that is Crown land—has launched an experimental program that is unprecedented in forest management. As climates have changed over the millen- nia, tree populations have always responded by shifting their habitats slightly from one gen- eration to the next. Now, however, climates are changing faster than trees can adapt, and in the early 2000s the ministry began experimenting with what it calls "assisted migration": a pro- gram aimed at speeding up the natural process of adaptation. Every year the province oversees the replanting of about 200,000 hectares of forest lost to logging or natural disaster. This program called for expanding the prescribed planting area of each tree species—typically by a kilometre or two to the north—in anticipation of where the climate of today is expected to be found tomorrow. The idea is that trees better adapted to the climate in which they grow will be healthier and better able to withstand fire, disease or infestation. It soon became evident, though, that climate change is outpacing this gradual approach, and in 2012 the ministry launched another pro- gram, dubbed "climate-based seed transfer," which involves a total overhaul of the prov- ince's approach to reforestation. Rather than determine where a seedling can be planted according to lines of latitude and longitude on a map, decisions will be made according to antici- pated climates of the future. The climate-based approach to reforestation will be implemented starting in 2017. As B.C. moves into uncharted territory in forest management, the whole province can be seen as a giant petri dish, with the pro- vincial government directing the experi- ment. And we've only got one chance to get it right. Unlike a high-school genet- ics experiment, where students might observe successive generations of flow- ering plants over the course of a year, trees take anywhere from 50 to 100 It On the northern fringe of the UBC campus, the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies is a haven of pure research. It is here that faculty of forestry professor Sally Aitken is taking a year off from teach- ing to pursue her research into the genetics of local forests