Forest restoration and stability includes: applied forest ecology and silviculture, comparative ecology and ecophysiology of forest trees, forest canopy biology, ecological aspects of global environmental change and old-world tropical forests. It also involves the comparative biology of trees and forest responses to human impacts through forest management, and unintentional impacts via local, regional, and global changes in the environment.
Another aspect of the study involves development of models for the Canadian Forest Service’s Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS), a system used operationally throughout Canada and a growing number of countries around the world. Research has focused on the projection of climate change impacts on fire activity and management in Canada using fire danger and fire occurrence models, and developing process-based models of fuel moisture exchange, fire ignition and spread that can be applied by fire management agencies throughout Canada.