Specific Forests or Forestry Research Projects

There are no specific research projects operating within this B.C. Forests and Forestry project as yet.

When there are, their on-line descriptions and working document collections will be accessible from this page.

Why don't you try to get one going?

Join the internet mailing list associated with this B.C. Forests and Forestry project. You can do this by emailing to listserv@hearn.nic.surfnet.nl, and placing the text

subscribe gp-bcfor YourFirstName YourLastName

in the body (not the subject line) of the mail message.

Start communicating with other members of the project to try to get a specific research project going on the topic of your choice.

Because of the nature of the group of people signed on to this mailing list, you may find that the best kind of project to conduct will be an attempt to gather information and viewpoints and produce a consensus report, or consensus report with points of diffference noted, with contribution from a wide spectrum of interests.

Or, if you are already part of a research project or report writing exercise on a topic concerning forests or forestry in British Columbia, again, please join the mailing list and tell us all about it. Someone may be able to assist you, or at the least, we can publish your work online in a place where it will be accessible alongside other work on forests and forestry in B.C.

Organizing A Specific Research Project

First of all, don't be frightened by the prospect. At minimum, all we are anticipating for a research project is a collaborative writing project to write up a report on some specific issue about forests or forestry in B.C.

Take a specific issue of direct and current relevance to forests and forestry in B.C., and of relevance to improving the situation or our collective knowledge of the situation.
Formulate the specific issue as a single major question.
Do due-diligence preliminary research or enquiries to ensure that your major question has not already been satisfactorily answered by others in the past.
Begin to let other interested people know about your plan, and try to get them involved.
Set some specific goal and timeframe, such as producing an interim, collaborative report to be published in the online library of this GRNSD project.

Eric Hawthorne (egh@mda.ca) can work with you to get you started. The first people who try this will be pioneers of a new way of working together on the dreaded "information you-know-what".

NOTE: More detailed suggestions about specific research project structure will be documented here, along with an example "template" project, as the methodology is developed. Any suggestions are welcome now. email to egh@mda.ca. (Eric Hawthorne)

Why Specific Research Projects?

The major goal of the Forests and Forestry project as a whole is to encourage interdisciplinary research and rational discussion of the complex issues involved in retaining a diverse, natural forest eco-system, and long-term viable forestry, in British Columbia, Canada.

The issue, as defined by the title of this project, Forests and Forestry in British Columbia, Canada, is too broad for consideration in detail as a whole. The overall forests and forestry issue should be broken into more manageable issues for detailed consideration.

One model of research work that we would like to encourage is interactive, online production by small working groups of consensus or semi-consensus reports about specific sub-issues. Since the working group interacts via the internet, it should be easier than usual to incorporate contributors with a range of viewpoints, to produce some interesting and useful reports.

It will be beneficial to have several different research activities co-ordinated under a single project information framework. Where specific research projects on B.C. forest or forestry issues are already taking place, it will be useful to refer to them from a central online information page.