Predicting softwood quality attributes from climate data in interior British Columbia, Canada

Ongoing and future climate changes are expected to result in fundamental shifts in forest productivity and wood quality over wide regions of interior British Columbia. This study was conducted to investigate the relationships between climate and wood property attributes within Douglas-fir and spruce forests, and to use those relationships to develop a non-invasive approach wood quality attribute prediction. Historical climate station data was correlated to tree-ring samples collected at five sites and climate-tree growth relationships were established to measure and predict wood density, cell-wall thickness, and microfibril angle attributes. Time series models were developed to reconstruct the measured wood properties, and a strong correspondence between the predicted and measured wood attributes was verified. The results confirm that climate parameters provide a useful index for assigning wood quality attributes to forest stands at many sites in BC's interior. The findings of this research provide insight into the impact future climates may have on wood quality characteristics and could be applied elsewhere to investigate the impacts of climate change on forest fibre supplies.