Dispersal of white spruce seeds and pollen/understory scarification in a mast year

Regions: Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Gwich'in Settlement Area

Tags: biology, revegetation, forestry, white spruce

Principal Investigator: Greene, David F (5)
Licence Number: 13338
Organization: Concordia University
Licensed Year(s): 2002
Issued: Jun 27, 2002
Project Team: Mariana Tr

Objective(s): There are essentially two projects to be done. The long distance dispersal of tree pollen and seeds is of considerable interest as we ask how fast plants can migrate in response to rapid climate change. Nonetheless, there are no useful data sets on long distance dispersal primarily because it is almost impossible to find well-isolated patches of source trees. The Inuvik area is a likely place because so many boreal species reach their range limit there as a set of discontinuous small populations. The researcher will focus on white spruce. Examination of seed dispersal will actually be based on looking at germinants (rather than seeds) in raked plots. As this raking will occur during a mast year of white spruce, then this provides an opportunity to examine a cost effective approach for regenerating spruce. This approach (understory scarification in a mast year) has been tried about 5 times in the southern boreal and was quite successful each time, although of course scarification was done by machine rather than by hand as envisioned here.