A Biodiversity Assessment for the Medway Community Forest

Written by Jennika Hunsinger, MCFC Forest Research Intern

From a desk in downtown Toronto, I write this as I am wrapping up the final few months of a Masters of Forest Conservation program at the University of Toronto, missing the Acadian forest and rural Nova Scotian lifestyle. It’s one thing to study what you love at a computer, in the classroom, on field trips and in labs, but another to be fully inundated day after day, watching the forest change with the season. From May-August I was fortunate enough to get to know the Medway Community Forest by designing and setting up a biodiversity study.

We know harvest operations and biomass removal from the forest impact how the ecosystem operates, and what species remain. We live in an era of human domination on the landscape where we rely on and use natural resources in nearly every aspect of our day. The human population grows exponentially putting increasing pressure on the planet and its natural ability to regenerate. It is well known that species extinction is occurring at a rate significantly greater than the natural level. The natural phenomenon of species extinction – with humans out of the picture - is understood to be somewhere between 1-5 species per year. While it is difficult to know precisely, it is estimated the current rate is 1000 times greater, with dozens of species going extinct every day. Many factors result in species loss though it is largely attributed to habitat loss, introduced non-native species, and climate change – all of which are triggered by human activity.

Conservation, restoration, and sustainable forest management will be the focus of my career and the way forward as we increasingly recognize the repercussions of deforestation. This being said, cutting trees is not a bad thing when done thoughtfully and sustainably.

 So, where to start in a biodiversity assessment of 15,000 ha of forest land – how do you do it, what is needed, and for what purpose? Thankfully there has been forest monitoring on crown land and in national parks for years. We have a good understanding of what species and measures serve as indicators of forest health, and what mature unmanaged Acadian forest historically consisted of.

The study objective is to provide an assessment of the effects of harvest operations on stand structure and population distribution trends overtime. The findings will inform management to promote regeneration and restore natural conditions of the Acadian forest.

I kicked off this study with a lot of reading and gathering of information from previous research and monitoring. Step two began in the spring of 2019, to determine how to best provide a representative analysis of the forest and choosing study site locations. Step three determined methods to measure forest structure and composition - the ways in which we can place numerical value on organic life – and defining forest health indicators. Step four involved collecting supplies and getting out in the forest to collect data, measure, and visually assess the environment – the fun part! Finally the analysis, we now have a benchmark of the current state of the forest to be used as a reference going forward.

Data from the Medway Community Forest will be compared against unmanaged mature Acadian forest data collected in Ecological Reserves in Maine. This comparison highlights how forest ecosystems are potentially impacted by harvesting and this awareness will be used to minimize degradation going forward.

We classify forests by the tree species present and their age. The study has 25 sites across the forest evenly distributed in white pine, red spruce, black spruce, red maple dominated stands, as 90% of the MCFC’s forest is comprised of these four species. The sites are split between two age classes, intermediate (40-70) and mature (71+). Freya Clark, the MCFC outreach intern, and I spent many days collecting data and stumbling across the terrain.

To name a few aspects, we measured the number of trees in a given area (within a prism sweep) and their diameter. We measured the diameter of pieces of woody debris on the ground larger than 7-cm, and the degree of decay for each. Quadrats (1m2) were used to look at the ground vegetation and tree regeneration. We did a bird survey with the help from experts in our community and were able to identify bird species present by song and call. We setup game trail cameras in each plot and baited them with donated cow bones from a local butcher and carrots to attract and identify mammals in the forest. The cameras captured plenty of footage of bears, deer, some squirrels, a bob cat and a reintroduced marten. There’s lots to learn about the forest by comparing what animals are present and where.

Game camera footage of a reintroducted American Marten caught during the biodiversity study,

We used the Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) indicator for the ground vegetation layer to rank each species present with a value that reflects a species' tolerance to disturbance and specificity to a particular habitat type.  

The volume of downed woody debris in each forest type is used as an indicator for forest health. The overall biodiversity of the forest is impacted by the diversity of the understory plant community due to the dependency for food, cover, nesting and other requirements.

The study results and management suggestions are underway as we continue with the analysis. Forest structure may have been simplified by decades of intensive forest management, but with careful management and a multi-species approach to conservation monitoring we can help restore habitat to support healthy populations of flora and fauna. All this effort goes to reducing ecosystem degradation, where many species are at risk of extirpation or extinction, it is critical we do all that we can to protect habitat and endangered species.