Forest Composition – Kluane

Parks Canada monitors vegetation composition in Kluane National Park and Reserve forests to determine resilience following a spruce bark beetle outbreak of unprecedented severity that occurred in the mid 1990’s. Understanding stand development after this landscape-level disturbance will be critical to assessing its effect on wildlife habitat and the impacts of beetle salvage logging outside of the park. Sampling is done every 5 years in 50 randomly located permanent sample plots in white spruce dominated mature forests. Three sub-measures are assessed: 1) Relative dominance of deciduous basal area, 2) percent cover of berry-bearing shrubs, and 3) ratio of willow clumps to tall spruce regeneration.