Canadian Wood Fibre Centre

The Canadian Wood Fibre Centre (CWFC) provides FPInnovations with “upstream” forest-level research services. All of the CWFC’s staff are Canadian Forest Service (CFS) employees housed at CFS centres across Canada.

In this innovative partnership, CWFC researchers respond to the research direction set by FPInnovations. This is an efficient arrangement that requires no incremental infrastructure investment by either party.

Research priorities include:

Inventory tools – Developing more accurate forest inventory tools that combine ecological knowledge with leading-edge remote sensing technology to improve predictions of volume and value in Canada’s forests, thereby improving the efficiency of mill processes and costs.

Production and correlations – Developing decision-support systems to relate fibre attributes to tree, stand and site characteristics, in order to determine how to successfully grow trees and stands with desirable characteristics and how to manage current and future forests that produce these desirable fibre attributes to meet industry needs.

Sector competitiveness – Providing tools to improve management decisions that maximize sector competitiveness, such as decision-support systems and predictive models.