The MGEM GTA Award recognizes outstanding contributions by graduate teaching assistants (GTA) from the Master of Geomatics for Environmental Management (MGEM) program. Each year one GTA who has demonstrated exceptional teaching excellence will be selected for the award.
Congratulations to Sadie Russell, 2025/2026 recipient of the MGEM GTA Award!
Sadie Russell (MGEM Top TA Award)
As a recent graduate from the MGEM program, Sadie’s passion was felt by all. Students commented that Sadie was inspiring, offered constructive feedback and was willing to help students. She was noted as detailed oriented and kind. Overall, Sadie was student focused, and the teaching team is excited for her continued development as a TA.
Yacoub is an interdisciplinary economist from the Ivory Coast working on the valuation of natural capital. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Felix Houphouet Boigny in Ivory Coast, where he also completed a Master’s in Human Resource Economics.
Later, Yacoub pursued and obtained his PhD in Economics at Erciyes University, Turkey, where his research focused on commodity markets, external shocks, and African economies. Before coming to UBC, Yacoub Kassouri was a Postdoctoral Researcher in biodiversity economics at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) in Leipzig, Germany.
Can you tell us about your research areas and the important projects you’ve worked on?
Credit: Yacoub Kassouri
My research focuses on the valuation of natural capital by exploring the economic connections between human and nature. During my postdoctoral work in Germany, I focused on developing a novel method to quantify the value of urban green spaces. My research largely focuses on two themes:
Natural capital valuation: the economic connections between nature, human health, and well-being with a concentration on urban biodiversity, individuals’ preferences for environmental goods, and non-market valuation.
Public policies and natural resource use in low-income countries: improving policies to increase efficiency of resource use; the relationship between conservation policy, agriculture, and economic development.
My methodical expertise comprises quantitative ecological-economic modelling, causal inference, economic experiments, conceptual modelling, and approaches from capital theory.
What inspired you to study resource economics and the relationship between people and the environment?
Born and raised in the agricultural town in Eastern Ivory Coast, I had firsthand exposure to farming communities. This shaped my understanding of the tight relationship between people’s livelihoods and the land. Experiencing how factors like poor harvests and seasonal changes affected family income and local economies inspired me to study the economic forces shaping livelihoods in vulnerable communities, with a particular focus on the links between environmental conditions, resource constraints, and rural development. These early experiences stimulate my curiosity about the links between natural resources and human well-being.
What are you most excited to work on at UBC FES?
What excites me about being here is the vibrant, interdisciplinary academic environment, the chance to work with world-class colleagues, and the strong support for research.
I aim to advance my research on the valuation of natural capital by establishing a “Natural Capital Accounting Lab” dedicated to deepening our understanding of how economic incentives shape human behavior toward nature and how economic policy instruments could contribute to conservation outcomes. The lab will develop rigorous empirical and analytical tools to strengthen the scientific foundation for sustainability in human–nature relationships and to inform more effective environmental and development policy.
I am excited by the opportunity at UBC Forestry & Environmental Stewardship to foster an interdisciplinary and critical understanding of economic approaches to forestry and conservation systems.
What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
During my spare time, I enjoy watching soccer and hiking around Vancouver.
Heat waves, growing populations, and rising stress have made access to parks and green spaces essential in cities around the world. But how do we ensure everyone can experience urban nature every day? UBC professors will lead a conversation on how to better integrate nature into design, planning, and policy. Explore how urban nature can help build healthier, more just, and more resilient communities – and what that means for where we live.
This webinar is part of The University of British Columbia Magazine‘s SPOTLIGHT on The Future of Housing.
Speakers
Dr. Keunhyun (Keun) Park – Assistant Professor of Urban Forestry, Faculty Lead of the Urban Nature Design Research Lab (Under Lab), UBC and Adjunct Professor at Utah State University
Dr. Keun Park is an Assistant Professor of Urban Forestry at UBC and leads the Urban Nature Design Research Lab. His research examines how cities can be designed to improve equitable access to urban nature, with a particular focus on how transportation systems and urban design shape people’s ability to access and experience parks and green spaces. His work informs planning and policy for healthier, more just, and resilient cities. He previously taught at Utah State University. He holds degrees in landscape architecture from Seoul National University and a PhD in Urban Planning and Design from the University of Utah.
Dr. Penny Gurstein, BArch’76 – Professor Emeritus, School of Community and Regional Planning, and Founding Director, Housing Research Collaborative, UBC
Penny Gurstein is a Professor Emeritus and immediate past Director of the School of Community and Regional Planning, and founding Director of the Housing Research Collaborative at UBC. Her research focuses on pathways to creating affordable housing. She has served on the boards of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, BC Housing, and the Vancouver Health Board (now Vancouver Coastal Health), and currently sits on the boards of Tikva Housing Society and PHS Community Services Society. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from York University, a Bachelor of Architecture from UBC, and a Master’s and PhD in Architecture from University of California, Berkeley.
Thomas Davidoff — Associate Professor, Strategy and Business Economics Division, UBC Sauder School of Business; Director, UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate
Thomas Davidoff is an Associate Professor at the UBC Sauder School of Business, where he studies housing markets, real estate economics, and public policy. His research focuses on housing affordability, property taxation, and how government policies shape real estate development and urban outcomes. A widely cited expert, his work has informed policy discussions across Canada and has been featured in national and international media. At UBC, he teaches real estate finance and urban economics, helping students understand the forces shaping cities and housing markets. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, a Master of Arts from Princeton University, and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
When: April 30, 2026 | 11:45 am – 12:45 pm Where: Forest Sciences Centre CAWP Caseroom 2916
This event is open to all and will be held in person only.
Seminar Abstract
This talk shares lessons learned from developing a new undergraduate course focusing on the use of geospatial technologies for understanding, mitigating, and addressing climate change. It covers successes, challenges, and key takeaways from integrating technical skills with broader discussions of policy, equity, and sustainability. Highlights include newly available open education resources and initial student feedback from the course pilot.
Speaker
Chris is a Lecturer in the Department of Forest Resources Management specializing in geomatics education. He is passionate about accessible and inclusive teaching pedagogies that connect geospatial technologies to pressing environmental challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and sustainability.
UBC Forestry & Environmental Stewardship congratulates Dr. Sara Barron for receiving the Killam Teaching Prize for the 2025-2026 academic year.
About Dr. Barron
Dr. Sara Barron is the Program Director of the Master of Urban Forestry Leadership program at the University of British Columbia.
Her work bridges landscape architecture and urban forestry, with research focused on designing and evaluating future urban forest scenarios in compact communities. She brings expertise in large-scale sustainable community planning and climate change research, and holds a Master of Landscape Architecture.
About the Killam Teaching Prize
The Killam Teaching Prize is awarded annually to faculty nominated by students, colleagues and alumni in recognition of excellence in teaching. Recipients are recognized at the graduation ceremonies.
A decade of research and a new book from UBC’s Dr. Suzanne Simard point to a shift in how forests should be managed.
New research from the UBC Forestry & Environmental Stewardship-based Mother Tree Project is shedding light on how forests respond to harvesting and climate stress, including practices aimed at reducing wildfire risk.
Dr. Suzanne Simard, a forest ecologist who leads the project, has spent more than a decade studying how Douglas fir forests recover after disturbance. The Mother Tree Project has produced multiple peer-reviewed studies, with more findings to come as the long-term research continues. Dr. Simard’s new book, When the Forest Breathes, builds on those findings and outlines a different approach to forest stewardship.
In this Q&A, she discusses what the research shows, what may need to change in B.C.’s forests, and the ideas behind her new book, which she will launch at a public Earth Day event April 22 at UBC’s Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.
What did you learn in your latest study examining thinning practices and wildfire risks near Whistler?
Many communities are thinning forests to reduce wildfire risk, often without clear evidence of the ecological trade-offs. We studied a community forest near Whistler with partners from the Lil’wat Nation and Squamish Nation to better understand those impacts.
In younger forests, careful thinning kept overall carbon levels stable in the short term and increased plant diversity, tripling the number of herb species. But it also simplified the forest structure and increased the dominance of Douglas fir. Forests made up mostly of one species are more vulnerable to pests, disease and climate stress.
More intensive clearing had much larger effects. In nearby old-growth areas, it reduced total ecosystem carbon by 42 per cent, with above-ground carbon five times lower than in intact forests.
The Mother Tree Project is designed as a 100-year study and started more than a decade ago. What have you found so far?
We compare different harvesting approaches in Douglas fir forests across B.C.’s Interior, alongside uncut areas. We track new tree growth, biodiversity and how much carbon is stored in trees and soils.
One clear pattern is that intact and lightly harvested forests store far more carbon. They also support stronger recovery over time.
We’ve also found that leaving mature trees standing—the overstory—helps forests regenerate and adapt, especially as drought becomes more common. These trees support native plant communities and reduce the spread of invasive species. By contrast, more intensive approaches can remove up to half of the carbon stored in a forest ecosystem.
How are Indigenous stewardship practices shaping what forestry could look like in B.C.?
Indigenous peoples have cared for these forests for thousands of years through systems grounded in long-term responsibility and close observation. In this work, First Nations partners are involved from the beginning—helping shape research questions, study design and how results are interpreted and applied.
What needs to change in the forestry sector?
Our research shows that more intensive approaches can disrupt the systems forests rely on to recover. Retaining mature trees and protecting soils, biodiversity and underground fungal networks are all critical, especially as climate extremes increase. It also points to the need to protect remaining intact old-growth and primary forests, which play an outsized role in storing carbon and supporting biodiversity. Equally important, we should ensure that Indigenous leadership is central to how forests are managed.
How does your new book connect to this research?
When the Forest Breathes brings together findings from the Mother Tree Project with what we’re continuing to learn about how forests function as living, connected systems. It’s also about shifting how we see forests, from resources to be extracted, to communities that sustain climate, biodiversity and human well-being.
The Earth Day event brings together science, music, Indigenous performance and legal perspectives. Why does it matter to bring these voices together now?
Science alone doesn’t always change how people relate to forests. Bringing together science, Indigenous leadership, art and music can create a deeper connection and a broader understanding of what’s at stake. It helps people see forests not just as timber, but as living systems that support communities, culture and climate.
Managing forested lands for community benefit is not a new concept. Evidence of humans clearing forests with fire to modify ecosystems dates back to the Middle Pleistocene, around 400,000 years ago. These ‘first foresters’ significantly predate the ‘first farmers’, whose food crops appeared a mere 12,000 years ago during the Neolithic Revolution.
Following millennia of altering forests to support community needs, including the traditional forest clearing and harvesting practices of Indigenous Peoples, Western science-based forest management practices emerged in the 18th century from a desire to create a quantifiable and rationalized discipline. This led to forestry entering academia at the turn of the 19th century, the upshot of which established management principles and silvicultural practices, initially, to support the creation of production forests.
By the start of the 20th century, sentiments about how forests should be viewed and used began to shift, giving rise to a sustainable forestry movement that continues today. As opposed to managing solely for timber production, the goal of sustainable forestry is to take a wide-lens, systemic view that accounts for the forests and lands on which they are found, as well as the human and biodiverse populations that forests support.
Today, the ethos of sustainable forestry can be found all over the world — nowhere more than in smaller, localized forest operations like community forests. This is a topic that Dr. Meike Siegner (PhD(Forestry)’21), Senior Manager of Project Design and Standards with Taking Root, knows well. Meike’s PhD dissertation investigated success factors in community forest enterprises, and she has published extensively on community forestry structures and policy-making.
“Community forest ownership starts from the premise of being and remaining in place, which keeps the operations and jobs in the community,” says Meike. “This differs from larger corporate structures based on global markets and pricing, where company headquarters can be located anywhere in the world, distant from the community members and values impacted by forest operations, and with a great deal of the profits flowing outside of the community.”
In British Columbia, historic policies and existing supply chains have tended to favour high-volume, large-scale harvesting operations focused on cost-minimization to produce competitive commodity productsfor global markets. In comparison, smaller, decentralized operations, such as community forests, often pursue alternative strategies focused on generating value for their land, as well as investing in their forestsand communities to ensure their combined long-term viability.
“Forestry in BC is presently in the midst of recognizing the problems inherent to centralizing forest management, including that local values are difficult to codify in legislation that tends to apply equally to everyone,” explains UBC Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship Assoc. Prof.Harry Nelson.
“The growth in scale and impact of forest harvesting have meant that other values on the land beyond timber production have too often been overlooked,” Harry adds. Attempts by the Government of BC to offer clearer direction on who can access forest management areas and for what purpose through new policy frameworks, such as the 2021 Forest Landscape Planning initiative, have made little difference in changing management approaches, so far.
BC’s roughly 62 community forests range in size from 360 hectares to 185,000 hectares at the top end of the scale, with a total of about 3.5 million cubic metres of annual harvest in the province allocated for small tenures such as these.10 By comparison, the total available annual allowable cut in timber supply areas on BC’s public lands sits at around 42.4 million cubic metres, with 21.5 million cubic metres held by five large forest companies.11
On the forest products value chain, pulp and 2x4s sit at one end, representing lower-value products that are easier to mass produce and sell on existing national and international supply chains. At the oppositeend are value-added products like mass timber, furniture and bioplastics from a wide variety of sources, including lower-value trees and forest residues. At present, these higher-value products are under-represented in BC’s value chain, with value-added production using only 7% of the total harvest.12
Scaling up value-added manufacturing has become a target of the BC government’s forest policy modernization strategy. The Kalesnikoff Lumber facility in the West Kootenays is a rare example of a BC manufacturer using a variety of high- and lower-grade trees to produce marketable value-added products. Family-owned and medium-sized, Kalesnikoff operates sawmilling and multi-species mass timber manufacturing facilities, as well as conducts sustainable woodlands management.
But, while BC’s community forests are also well-positioned to venture into value-added production, several roadblocks remain in their path. “The current scale of community forests in BC is conducive to supporting a strong and vibrant value-added market segment; however, a lack of available processing facilities and equipment are making it more challenging to scale up,” says FES DeanRob Kozak . “To compete with larger, established forest companies, community forests in BC could cluster together and collaborate to produce value-added products that can integrate into existing supply chains.”
A scattering of more small- to medium-sized forest operations, such as Kalesnikoff, across the province could offer innovative and agile forest solutions for community forests, establishing new markets while managing for a tailored set of community, cultural and environmental values and needs. Community forests could also offer an economic boost, particularly for Indigenous, rural and remote communities. Even now, community forests employ, on average, 76% more local workers than the industry average, according to 2022 statistics from the BC Community Forest Association.
In Mexico, the tide turned in the direction of community forest ownership following a period of government reforms in the early 1900s, including the enactment of a new constitution in 1917, coupled with significant grassroots action. Today, community ownership covers over 50 million hectares of the country’s 63 million hectares of forest.16 Communities also own a greater share of the production of forest products through small- to medium-sized forest enterprises, with the monies flowing back to communities, as opposed to multinational organizations.
Changing values and landscapes in BC are adding to the voices calling for policy reform to shift more momentum toward community ownership. Much of BC’s harvestable forest now consists of second growth stands of lesser value. These same forests are under increased pressure from climate change, floods, wildfires, pests, diseases and political uncertainty in the form of tariffs and duties. Urban encroachment and competing values on the land are also raising the stakes, as more interest groups — eco-tourism, recreation, hunting, fishing, biodiversity conservation, habitat preservation, among others — vie for a seat at the table.
“I see a lot of folks in forestry constrained by the legacies of power under which they work,” says FES PhD studentDane Pedersen, whose research focuses on analyzing the shifting relationships betweensociety and nature in emerging forest management practices, processes and policies. “There are government officials acting in good faith, trying to make a difference, trying to address some of the issues in this sector, but they are bound by the existing policies and don’t have the latitude to challenge some of the foundational tenets on which this country was built.”
Congratulations to Hanno Southam for being the 2026 recipient of the Forest Professionals BC (FPBC) Sustainable Forestry Management Prize!
About the Forest Professionals BC (FPBC) Management Award
Established in 2016, this prize was made available by ForesTrust, registered charity of the Association of BC Forest Professionals (FPBC). Each year, students enrolled in the Master of Sustainable Forest Management program who have demonstrated academic excellence and leadership skills through their studies will be selected for the prize.
UBC Forestry & Environmental Stewardship wishes to congratulate Mckenzie Stevenson, Alicia Kathleen Rice, Joshua Quaite, and Bill Ralston on being the 2026 recipients of the Binkley Family Graduate Scholarship!
About the Binkley Family Graduate Scholarship
This scholarship is made available through an endowment established by Dr. Clark S. Binkley, and is awarded to one outstanding graduate student in each of the Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship’s professional master’s programs (MGEM, MIF, MSFM, & MUFL).
Increasingly destructive floods also re-ignite debate on how we can make communities more resilient. Should we rely solely on traditional infrastructure like dikes and dams? In many regions, traditional infrastructure is aging and becoming increasingly insufficient, especially due to climate change.
Our recent paper challenges this conclusion. It comes from studies that don’t correctly reveal how changing forest cover causes changes in flood frequencies and sizes, leading them to underestimate what forests can do. Our methods that can causally link changes in forest cover to floods suggest that forests can mitigate floods of all sizes.
Flood Risk
Floods occur when factors like rainfall, landscape wetness, snowpack and snowmelt combine. These factors vary randomly through time and over the landscape. Today, flood risk is escalating, and the stakes are high in many regions.
A flood event of a certain size and frequency can be generated by an infinite number of combinations of the same factors. Understanding the causes of rising risk means considering all possible flood-generating combinations.
Large floods happen naturally, but adding or removing forests can change their size and frequency. It’s important to consider how changing forest cover alters both factors. The dominant approach doesn’t do this; it only looks at how flood sizes change.
Forest hydrologists, engineers, policymakers, conservationists and industry leaders have long debated the extent to which we should rely on forests to mitigate floods. These debates often reflected competing interests, which in turn influenced policy.
The dominant method underestimates just how strongly even large floods react, giving the impression that degrading forests won’t influence large floods. In reality, floods could be happening much more frequently if not for forests.
Relying on that method can put communities in even more danger when losses of lives and livelihoods, economic damages and lawsuits are already piling up from improper land management and climate change.
It also makes us undervalue nature and miss out on novel opportunities to incorporate nature’s ability to mitigate floods. Our flood management therefore must be guided by strong science.
Healthy forests are integral to flood management
Our study examined the core research questions and methods of both the dominant approach and a less dominant approach to determine which one reveals how changes in forest cover cause changes in flood risk. We stepped back to look at how flood risk is assessed more widely beyond forest influences, and how related disciplines like climate science answer similar questions.
Our study challenges the validity of the dominant non-causal method. Instead, our synthesis advocates for the less dominant causal method, which is in fact standard outside the field of forest hydrology.
The less dominant approach considers how the frequency and size of floods change when we add or remove forests. Accounting for all possible flood-generating combinations can reveal how changes in forest cover cause changes in large floods.
Forests return moisture back into the atmosphere, promote infiltration and, in snow environments, promote smaller snowpacks that melt slower. Consequently, forests can reduce the probability of even large floods, making them smaller and much rarer.
It’s time for forest hydrology to follow suit. We can no longer afford to justify non-causal work that greatly underestimates risk.
Incorporating strong science means recognizing that forests can reduce the risks of even large floods, making them much less common.
In regions where causal studies are limited, reports should acknowledge this difference among causal and non-causal studies elsewhere and encourage rigorous science.
Planning and management must consider both climatic and landscape drivers. Degraded landscapes, even in uplands thousands of kilometres away, can cause floods downstream. Governments must manage the land carefully, collaborating across jurisdictions to ease downstream risk.
There is concern that nature-based approaches can’t mitigate large floods, especially in forest-based initiatives. Our research, however, indicates that forests and other nature-based initiatives can address flooding and complement traditional infrastructure while providing a range of social and ecological benefits.
By adopting and promoting causal science, we can overcome key barriers for implementation and build a strong case for wider adoption of forests as an integral part of nature-based flood management.
