The Percy Stubbs and John Bolton King and Edward Garfitt Prize for Silviculture (Silvicultural Prize) is awarded annually for work advancing the sector’s knowledge of silviculture published in the Institute’s prestigious journal Forestry: An International Journal of Forest Research.
We are delighted to announce the 2023 Silvicultural Prize has been awarded to Dr Guillaume Moreau for the paper ‘Simplified tree marking guidelines enhance value recovery as well as stand vigour in northern hardwood forests under selection management’, developed with Catherine Chagnon, Malcolm J L Cecil-Cockwell, David Pothier, Alexis Achim, Steve Bédard, François Guillemette and John Caspersen.
Upon receiving the award, Guillaume commented:
“It is an honour to receive the Silvicultural Prize for 2023 and I am very grateful for this recognition. I am absolutely delighted that our work attracted the attention of the Forestry editors, for which I have the greatest respect. This award is particularly important to me, as I valued practical research that has the potential to directly improve silvicultural practices. I am very pleased to accept this award in recognition of the collaborative efforts of all the co-authors, the industry partners, Haliburton Forest & Wildlife Reserve and Domtar, and to the many people who contributed to the collection of the data at the Direction de la recherche foresters.”
Editor in Chief of Forestry, Professor Dr Fabian Faßnacht, commented:
“This paper is a well-deserved winner of the Silvicultural Prize because the authors present a study which is not only scientifically interesting and sound but also of highly practical value. The study assesses existing tree marking guidelines for logging operations in northern hardwood forests in Eastern Canada under selection cutting management regimes. The methodical approach, which includes marking simulations based on the detailed individual tree information available from before and after selected logging operations, is an elegant solution for an otherwise hard to conduct study.”
Guillaume is a recently hired member of the faculty in the department of wood and forest sciences at Laval University. He leads a new research program in silviculture and specialises in understanding the environmental drivers of tree vigor both in terms of survival and growth. Since 2018, he has authored more than 16 research papers, the majority as the lead author. One of his important contributions to the field of silviculture is the use of dendrochronological methods as a tool to quantify the effects of silvicultural treatments and other environmental drivers of tree growth at the tree and stand scale. He is also the author of a series of six publications aimed at improving our knowledge of the links between apparent tree defects (including crown and stem defects), and their vigor. In addition to enabling better monitoring of overall forest health through visual indicators, these projects have led to the development of a new tree classification system for selective cutting.
Institute members benefit from a free subscription to Forestry: An International Journal of Forest Research and can read the full paper online.
