The Percy Stubbs and John Bolton King and Edward Garfitt Prize for Silviculture (Silvicultural Prize) is awarded annually for work published in the Institute of Chartered Foresters’ (ICF) prestigious journal Forestry: An International Journal of Forest Research.
We are delighted to announce the 2024 Silvicultural Prize has been awarded to Dr Tzeng Yih Lam for the paper ‘Integrating rapid assessment, variable probability sampling, and machine learning to improve accuracy and consistency in mapping local spatial distribution of plant species richness’, developed with Bo-Hao Perng, Sheng-Hsin Su, Mohamad Danial Md Sabri, David Burslem, Dairon Cardenas, Álvaro Duque, Sisira Ediriweera, Nimal Gunatilleke, Vojtech Novotny, Michael O’Brien and Glen Reynolds.
Upon receiving the award, Lam commented:
“We are genuinely delighted and are very grateful to the journal Forestry and the ICF for selecting our work for the Silvicultural Prize. It reaffirms our belief that interdisciplinary approach and collaboration promotes creativity in our search for solutions to complex challenges in forest management.”
Editor in Chief of Forestry, Professor Dr Fabian Faßnacht, commented:
“This paper deserves this year’s Silvicultural Prize since it addresses a highly relevant topic – the assessment of plant diversity – with an innovative methodical approach that integrates local knowledge of communities with sampling theory and machine learning approaches. Tropical rainforests harbour a large share of the terrestrial biodiversity of our planet and keeping track of this biodiversity remains an unsolved challenge. Our Silvicultural Prize winners address this challenge by suggesting innovative and efficient forest inventory designs which could serve to simultaneously improve terrestrial biodiversity surveys in rainforests and connect scientists with local communities.”
Lam is a forest mensurationist and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Forestry, The University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada. Prior to UBC, he was an Associate Professor at the School of Forestry and Resource Conservation, National Taiwan University in Taiwan. He worked as a consultant and in a non-governmental organisation before joining academia. His work has spanned many countries, including South Korea and Malaysia.
ICF members benefit from a free subscription to Forestry: An International Journal of Forest Research and can read the full paper online.
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Notes to Editor
The Institute of Chartered Foresters (ICF) is incorporated by Royal Charter as the only professional body in the UK to award chartered status to those working in forestry and arboriculture. The Institute works to foster a greater public awareness and understanding of forestry in order to serve a variety of commercial, recreational, environmental and scientific interests.
Full details of how to join the Institute, and routes to Professional Membership are available on the ICF website.
