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| THE CARRYING CAPACITY IS NOT BOUNDLESS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Wallonia’s Nature and Forest Division (DNF for Division de la Nature et des Forêts) is responsible for the sustainable management of the game populations in the Walloon Region. As a result, it must set reasoned annual hunting quotas (or cull rates) for the various parts of the Walloon Region that harbour deer. Such hunting quotas are developed on the basis of two types of information, that is, the number of deer in a given area and the maximum number of deer that this area can support without endangering the forest’s economic value and ecology. This is the ‘carrying capacity’. |
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In this context, the Nature, Forest and Timber Research Centre (Centre de la Recherche de la Nature, des Forêts et du Bois) or CRNFB is studying the possibility of defining and mapping carrying capacity indices of the stands in part of Saint Hubert Forest. This index, which is based on analysis of many criteria, embraces both qualitative and quantitative parameters (e.g., dominant species, tranquillity, soil type, amount of light reaching the ground, proximity of feeding grounds and sheds, and effects of felling timber). |
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While some of these variables are relatively stable and can be deduced directly from existing documents (soil maps, road network, etc.), other variables related to the stands’ biophysical characteristics are much more dynamic. The table recapitulates the state of our knowledge of various criteria for Saint Hubert Forest.
Table: State of knowledge of criteria required
for constructing a carrying capacity index for Saint Hubert Forest
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How many deer may we keep The final goal of the CRNFB research programme is to develope a steady-state carrying capacity mapping method for managing the habitats of deer. The estimation of the canopy closure is a critical step in the model used to assess the wood’s carrying capacity. Now, a specific aim of this study is to show that remote sensing by satellites can provide accurate estimates of the types of stand in a forest and their canopy closure rates. |
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