Forests make up a significant part of Canada's economy and play an important role in our social and environmental heritage. Without them, Canada would not be the prosperous and biologically diverse nation that it is today. The sustainable management of Canada's forests is key to ensuring the continuation of this prosperity and diversity.

NRCan's GSDNR program is contributing to the sustainable management of Canada's forests in collaboration with the Canadian Forestry Service (CFS) through its national 1:50 000 scale digital elevation model (DEM) project.

This project evolved from the success of the 1:250 000 DEM, which was the first regular grid DEM model for Canada and which contributed to a national hydrologically corrected and connected stream and river network. Because climate and topography (elevation) are the primary environmental drivers for forest productivity and species diversity, the CFS needed this DEM to better spatially model the influence of climate on terrain attributes for further forest research and analyses.

The 1:250 000 DEM is now available on GeoBase. Although this model was a huge success, the CFS needed higher resolution DEMs so as to more closely examine various terrain attributes, their influence on the movement of soil and nutrients, and the resulting effect on forest, plant, and wildlife productivity and distribution.

The 1:50K DEM model provides information on the relationships between solar radiation, topography, and the production of crops and trees. This will in turn enable more accurate mapping of soil properties, moisture regimes and salinity.

This more detailed DEM will also be used to model species diversity, species at risk, and afforestation as part of Canada's Kyoto commitments.

The CFS will use the 1:50 000 DEM to meet government S&T priorities for sustainable forest management.

The majority of CFS' terrain analysis efforts are located at the Turkey Lakes Watershed, a research sudy area north of Sault Ste. Marie. For more information on how the CFS is currently using DEMs for terrain analysis, please see the Turkey Lakes website.

GSDNR's DEMs, Kyoto, and Afforestation A sample project that links the biology and economics of the afforestation of marginal agricultural lands in Canada for the purposes of carbon sequestration is already underway at the Great Lakes Forestry Centre. This project is part of the Feasibility Assessment of Afforestation for Carbon Sequestration program, which examines options to support Canada's position on Kyoto. The aim of the project is to develop a spatially explicit cost/benefit information system that includes wood production and below- and aboveground carbon sequestration. The system would also calculate "break-even carbon prices" that are inclusive of an opportunity cost for agricultural production values. Fine-scaled terrain analyses from the 1:50K DEM project will be part of this research as the DEM project evolves. For more information on this project visit the Web site.

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