Nicholas Coops, Professor, Faculty of Forestry (UBC) and a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in remote sensing

Nicholas is the head of the Integrated Remote Sensing Studio (IRSS) within the Faculty of Forestry at UBC, a research lab at UBC investigating and demonstrating applications of remote sensing data to environmental and forest production issues. He has published over 520 peer-reviewed journal papers and was the editor - in - chief of the Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing for a decade. Nicholas was awarded a Killam research scholarship, the Carl Pulfrich Award sponsored by Leica, and the silver and gold medals by the Canadian Remote Sensing Society (CRSS) Award, the highest award for mid-career and senior scholars in remote sensing in Canada. In 2020 Nicholas was a joint winner of the Marcus Wallenberg Prize (known as the Nobel prize in Forestry) for his research into satellite analysis and numerical modelling of tree and forest growth.

Digital Forested ecosystems
New sensors, and data for addressing climate change in Canadian Forests

Canada’s forests are highly sensitive to climate change, in particular increases in forest disturbances such as fire, drought and infestations. Concurrently, Canada’s forest offer significant potential as a natural climate solution, to sequester additional carbon from the atmosphere. Remote sensing and sensor technologies offer significant potential to better understand, and manage Canada’s forest and help provide tools and practical solutions for decision-makers, managers and planners to adapt their forest management practices. These decisions will then improve both resistance to stressors and resilience to disturbance, and thereby ensure the longevity of forest-based communities across Canada. Nicholas will provide an overview of some of these new advances, currently being investigated at UBC, and with collaborators, and discuss their use and adoption as we adjust to a new climate reality for our forests.

Lori Daniels, Professor, Faculty of Forestry (UBC) Forest and Conservation Sciences

"My research strives to advance fundamental scientific knowledge on forest dynamics, which is imperative for conserving and managing contemporary forests and adapting to global environmental change. My research characterizes how natural disturbances, humans and climate interact to drive temperate forest dynamics and resilience. It has produced three key contributions:

(1) My international collaborations demonstrate widespread tree mortality in North and South America, disentangling the relative impacts of drought, insects and pathogens.

(2) Many forests in the Canadian Cordillera are increasingly susceptible to wildfire due to complex interactions among fire suppression, land-use and climatic change.

(3) My novel forest reconstructions include tree-ring methods adapted to address aboriginal cultural uses and traditional management, largely overlooked by forest managers.

My enduring partnerships with local to national governments, environmental organizations, forest management companies, community forests, and First Nations have helped me translate these scientific advances to operational conservation, restoration and management policies and practices."

Wildfires in British Columbia: Causes, Consequences and Coexistence

Wildfire is an essential process in forest ecosystems, but can be incredibly destructive in the wildland-urban interface, as we experienced again during the 2021 fire season. Wildfire is driven by climate, weather and fuels that vary among ecosystems and through time. Combined, land-use change, fire exclusion and global warming have made many forests highly susceptible to intense fires that are difficult to control and spread to large sizes. Revolutionizing forest and fire management will improve ecosystem resilience to climate change, but we will not stop future fires from burning. Successful adaptation must also include individuals and communities learning how to coexist with wildfire.