Evaluating Interior Spruce Seed Deployment with GIS-Based Modeling Using British Columbia’s Prince George Seed Planning Zone as a Model

Abstract The maintenance, protection, and conservation of forest genetic resources for economic, ecological and social benefits are daunting tasks. Understanding how reforestation materials are spatially and temporally deployed across the landscape is an integral component of forest genetic resources management. To improve the current understanding of how reforestation materials are deployed in British Columbia (BC), we developed a geographical information systems (GIS) method to track seed deployment across silviculture openings. Generally, reforestation materials can originate from either natural stand (wild seed collections) or orchards’ seed sources (improved seed); the latter are produced within the framework of specific tree improvement program designed for a particular species within a well-defined seed deployment area, commonly known as Seed Planning Zone (SPZ). In this paper, we present a GIS-based method for evaluating seed deployment patterns for interior spruce (Picea glauca and Picea engelmannii and their natural hybrids) within the Prince George SPZ. The evaluation period (1970-2004) is associated with wild stands and improved seed availability and the dynamic of each seed source proportionate contribution followed three distinct phases; namely, developing (1970-1987), immature (1988-1994), and mature (1995-2004) with a progressive increase of orchards’ seed use over time. The developed method is scalable across SPZs of the same species or multiple species, thus providing the means to: 1) temporally and spatially monitor improved and natural stands seed deployment over the landscape; and 2) identify areas of concerns where a particular seed source is over-represented which might pose an increased genetic vulnerability. The present study revealed that the current interior spruce orchard’s seed use within the Prince George SPZ is expected to exceed the provincial goal of performance target of 75% by 2014. Additionally, areas of excessive use of one seed orchard seed were identified.