HydroEcological Landscapes and Processes (HELP)

OVERVIEW

The HydroEcological Landscapes and Processes (HELP) project is funded by the Sustainable Forest Management Network (SFMN), Network Centres of Excellence. The project is coordinated by an interagency team of scientists, and includes interactions with non-government and government agencies, industry and First Nations to ensure the relevance and transfer of science to policy and operations. By examining terrestrial-aquatic linkages across Canada’s diverse landscape, the aim of the project is to produce a framework for quantifying hydrologic, geomorphic and ecologic processes of forest landscapes at the national level. This framework will be used to define criteria and indicators for detecting hydroecological responses to forest management activities.

After fibre extraction, water is arguably the most visible and essential ecosystem service provided by forests. Almost half of Canada’s land area is forested, and forested headwaters play key roles in controlling surface and subsurface water resources across the country. There is a great need to manage these water resources in a sustainable fashion. In order to meet this need, an understanding of the controls on water resources in different forest landscapes across Canada is required in the format of a Hydrological Classification.

There is considerable recent and ongoing research into the linkages between terrestrial, riparian, and aquatic ecosystems in a number of Canada’s forest landscapes, and the consequences of forest management activities for these landscapes. However; there has been no attempt to date to identify all of this work across the country, or to integrate formally the results of this work at the national level. This identification and integration is critical to the design of future experiments and to our ability to prescribe Best Management Practices (BMPs).

The HydroEcological Landscapes and Processes (HELP) project has been designed to combine previous and ongoing project data, as well as Aboriginal knowledge, on terrestrial-aquatic linkages across Canada’s forest landscapes in order to produce a framework for quantifying hydrologic, geomorphic and ecologic processes of forest landscapes. Based on this framework, quantitative criteria and indicators for detecting hydroecologic responses to forest management activities will be defined.  The project will also test the ability of various modelling strategies to scale study results obtained at the local level to entire drainage basins in order to assess the cumulative effects of management activities in different forest landscapes across Canada.

The objectives of the project are as follows:

1. Classify stream-riparian-basin systems (SRBSs) using hydroclimatic (HC), hydrogeomorphic (HG) and hydroecological (HE) criteria;
2. Identify specific quantitative process indicators potentially affected by forest management in a given SRBS as a function of HC/HG/HE characteristics;
3. Create a database of measurements and models at stream, riparian and/or basin scales from previous and current studies of HC/HG/HE processes, with representation from all of Canada’s ecoclimatic regions;
4. Integrate and synthesize these data to develop conceptual/statistical/numerical models of natural variability of hydrologic, geomorphic and ecological processes in forest landscapes;
5. Develop conceptual frameworks and indicators of the consequences of forest management activities for various SRBSs (identified in (1)); and
6. Test the ability of various conceptual/statistical/numerical modelling strategies to scale site/stand level results up to the basin to assess cumulative effects of management activities in different forest landscapes.

The outcomes from these objectives will be incorporated into the website as they are completed. 

FUNDING

The HELP project is a Sustainable Forest Management Network (SFMN) funded project. 

Additional resources and funds were provided by participating SFMN partners.