Forests and Forestry in British Columbia, Canada

Welcome to the Global Research Network on Sustainable Development (GRNSD) Project on Forests and Forestry in British Columbia, Canada.

What Is This?, and How To Get Involved in this project.

What's New

Context-Setting Group Reports
Source Document Library (or click here if your browser doesn't do forms.)
Discussion Forum
Specific Research Projects

What Is This Project?

Briefly, this is an attempt to create an interdisciplinary, on-line research project on the general topic of sustainability of forests and forestry in British Columbia, Canada.

Project Goals

To promote interdisciplinary research into the state of affairs and the prognosis for forests and forestry in British Columbia.

To provide an electronic meeting place where people knowledgeable about forests or forestry or related topics, but with differing backgrounds, expertise, or interests, can exchange ideas and work together.

To promote rational discussion of methods for improving the long-term ecological sustainability of B.C. forests, and the long-term economic sustainability of forest resource extraction and employment.

To promote research into solutions
To promote study and measurement of the efficacy of solutions which are already being tried in the field.
To support analysis of conflicts in beliefs and values concerning forests and forestry, with a view to assisting resolution of these conflicts
To promote discussion and analysis of the political situation regarding forests and forestry
To promote discussion of political and organizational mechanisms for improving the situation
To promote discussion of technology and methods which may contribute to improving the situation

To be a central location for good-quality information on forests and forestry in British Columbia, Canada.

To operate under the charter and guidelines of the Global Research Network on Sustainable Development; in particular to operate as an independent, open, neutral network with scholarly standards of discourse and information.
To improve continually the quality and completeness of the GRNSD online, networked information collection on forests and forestry in British Columbia
To foster understanding of the current state of knowledge about forests and forestry in British Columbia, with emphasis on characterizing areas of uncertainty and on analysing differences in assumptions and models.

Q: So why is this project information framework on forests and forestry in British Columbia, Canada stored on a computer in the Netherlands?

A: It just doesn't matter. We're dealing with global problems, and we need global solutions.

What's new?

As of April 18, 1995...

New Collaborative Reports Experiment !

We are trying out the HyperNews system as a mechanism for generating collaborative reports on B.C. forest and forestry topics.

Enter the embryonic world of group report writing (and some informal but slightly structured discussion too) by checking out the B.C. Forests and Forestry Project Collaborative Reports starting point.

You will need a forms-capable web browser such as Netscape or Mosaic to participate actively. However, you may mail a response to the gp-bcfor listserv discussion group, and if you indicate where in the reports discussion tree it should go, I will enter your contribution into the HyperNews. This should allow those who have a limited web browser (such as lynx) to participate to some degree.

Please remember that HyperNews is experimental, and right now we are hosted on someone else's server. So if you have a contribution that you value dearly, use the url method of specifying your contribution to the threaded discussion, and save your contribution on your own local web server. If you don't yet understand what I mean by that, first read all about HyperNews and experiment with it, then come back and read this advice again.

Go forth and author.

New Library Documents

The following (hyper)documents have just been added to the library:

Clayoquot Sound Scientific Panel Progress Report 2 (May 1994 document)

What else is new

The library currently has eight documents. We're hoping to get more and better documents soon. This is largely up to YOU!

Plea for contribution of forest or forestry info documents!

The GP-BCFOR mailing list became operational in mid-December, 1994. It now has more than 60 members, with a diverse set of backgrounds. Subscribe to the mailing list yourself to find out who we are.

Information Framework Re-organization - This home page and the information descending from it were re-organized on Jan 20, 1995, following editorial suggestions from Aldo DeMoor, the GRNSD co-ordinator. Thanks Aldo. I think it's easier to use now. Further suggestions welcome from anyone. e-mail to egh@mda.ca.

What's Old (History of this project)

This project on Forests and Forestry in British Columbia is a research project within the Global Research Network on Sustainable Development. The GRNSD itself has been gradually taking shape since about the summer of 1993, but only now, after co-operative development by a working group of a draft charter explaining what it is about and how it should operate, is it beginning to be made widely available on the internet.

This GRNSD Project on Forests and Forestry in British Columbia was initiated as a concept in August of 1994, following discussions with the GRNSD founder in 1993. This project information framework was made public on the Internet in December 1994. It is in its infancy.

Future History (depends on all of us)

The extent to which this project flourishes will depend on whether people with an interest in clarifying the issues, improving the quality of information, and working on solutions to issues in B.C. forests and forestry see fit to participate. And it will depend on the amount of energy each volunteer participant can contribute to the effort. It's up to all of us who think this is important.

How to get involved

To get involved as a contributing participant of this project, please contact the current project co-ordinators directly by e-mail. Everyone welcome. Alternatively, just subscribe yourself to the project mailing list.

You are also welcome to become a participant in collaborative research report writing under the project. We are conducting an on-line experiment in collaborative report writing.

Forests and Forestry in B.C. Project Coordinators:

Eric Hawthorne (email: egh@mda.ca)
               (phone: weekdays: (604) 278-3411, home: (604) 436-0193)
 
Send hardcopy documents by snailmail to:
         Eric Hawthorne
         5166 Portland St.
         Burnaby B.C.
         V5J 2P9
 
and
 
Jim Wight (email: jwight@IslandNet.com).

Your participation is welcome in any of the following categories:

Build the source document library. Contribute softcopy documents about any aspect of forests and/or forestry in British Columbia, or relevant material about forests elsewhere. (ascii text or html format.) Use e-mail or make documents ftp-accessible or www-accessible. Documents, document URLs, abstracts with reference, or just reference lists are welcome.
Contribute (sneaker mail) a hardcopy document. We can scan it in. (20 page or less documents preferred.)
Contribute, for inclusion in the library, a well-researched, well-founded critique of a document that you find in the online Forests and Forestry library or elsewhere.
Participate in the discussion forum (listserv mailing list).
Initiate a research project (a sub-project of this overall B.C. Forests and Forestry project) on a specific topic.
Participate in an existing specific research project organized under or in co-operation with this project.
Become involved in the planning, maintenance, or organization of the project. This can range from simply forwarding your suggestions to the coordinators, through ongoing participation in the project development discussion forum, all the way to taking on a specific role. Right now, it's pretty informal. As was mentioned, we're just getting started.

The Forests and Forestry Project Discussion Forum

An internet listserv mailing list has been set up for this project. It is very easy to become a participant.

Send e-mail to listserv@hearn.nic.surfnet.nl

In the body (not subject line) or the mail message, type

subscribe gp-bcfor YourFirstName YourLastName

Sometime after you do this, you will receive notice of your membership in the mailing list. It may take a little while because the list owner ( a mere human being ) must add you to the list. You will also receive by e-mail, instructions on how to send messages to the mailing list members, and on how to get archives of previous discussions that have been held in the list. It's kind of like an internet (usenet) newsgroup, but easier for us to administrate.

Please feel free to send messages to the members of the mailing list. It's no big deal, and as long as it has something to do with forests or forestry in B.C., we're probably interested.

The mailing list is mainly intended to be used for:

Discussing the development of the Forests and Forestry Project information collection
Discussing how the project should work
Banter, argument, whatever about specific forest or forestry issues
Informal critiques of any issue or piece of information found within the Forests and Forestry project
Co-ordinating specific research projects (or report-writing projects) which are being organized within this overall Forests and Forestry project.

Collaborative Report Writing

While the listserv discussion forum is useful for general discussion, it is not a threaded (organized) conversation like an internet news group. Thus it is hard to have separate specific, focussed discussions.

Luckily, there is a new technology called HyperNews that is very similar to internet usenet newsgroups, but with less administration overhead. It uses the worldwide web technology to emulate threaded newsgroups.

Using HyperNews, we are conducting an on-line experiment in collaborative report writing.

You are welcome and encouraged to become an active participant in the collaborative interdisciplinary research report writing effort under the project.