Lakehead hub of research activity.

• Author: GOULIQUER, DIANNE
• Position: Lakehead University's paper birch and paleo-DNA research - Brief Article

Lakehead University is seeing an abundance of activity and development, the school's communication director says.

Specifically, Nancy Angus points to new research taking place in the university's faculty of forestry and the forest environment, development in the school's department of anthropology and additions to Lakehead's applied science programs.

The faculty of forestry and the forest environment, under the leadership of Dr. Jian Wang, was recently awarded nearly $100,000 in research grant money to undertake a study examining the growth and economic potential of paper birch, Angus says.

Wang says his four-year research program will analyze paper birch and its potential as an alternative hardwood.

"I used to work in British Columbia," Wang says. "In B.C. most people focus on conifers - softwood lumber. But when the Asian financial crisis hit we couldn't sell enough two-by-fours and we suffered economically. We had lots of other hardwood species that we could use in a value-added way, like furniture-making.

"When I came to Ontario and I realized Ontario is a net hardwood importer, I realized we have a lot of hardwood that we never utilize."

Wang says using paper birch as an alternative hardwood would stabilize the economy through diversification resulting in new jobs "for the forest-dependent small communities.

"We have this tremendous resource that we traditionally used as fireweed and always treated as a weed species that we tried to kill off. We spend millions of dollars every year on herbicides to control it and not manage it (and instead) plant jack pine."

Although paper birch is found across Canada, Wang says Ontario is home to two different species: white birch in north-western Ontario, and yellow birch - which is more valuable- in central Ontario.

He says there are about 60 million cubic metres of mature paper birch presently in northwestern Ontario.

The plant is abundant and grows naturally in northwestern Ontario, and therefore the only planting work necessary is for site preparation and land scarification after a harvest.

Wang's research began recently after being awarded a research grant of $18,000 per year for four years from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

Research conducted by the university's anthropology department has given...