The Malcolm Knapp Research Forest
卑詩大學實驗林(Chinese)

The Malcolm Knapp Research Forest is located in the foothills of the Coast Mountains, approximately 60 km east of Vancouver, British Columbia. The forest itself is 5,157 hectares in size, with an average width (from west to east) of 4 km and an average length (from south to north) of 13 km. The landbase contains just about every type of terrain found in the lower coastal region of BC. The Forest stretches north and east up the steep slopes of the Golden Ears Mountains to about 1000 m about sea level, west down to sea level at Pitt Lake, and south to the edge of the urban interface in Maple Ridge.

Before the Research Forest was managed by the University of BC, there were two major forces which significantly impacted the land base: fire and logging. Although the climate of the Forest is quite wet, fire is still the most important natural disturbance in this area, with large fires typically re-occurring every 200 years or so. In 1868, a large fire swept through the western side of the forest, burning everything but the wettest pockets of land around lakes and in stream basins. Most of this area is now covered with 120-year-old forests made up of a mixture of Douglas-fir, western red cedar and western hemlock, although the some parts of the old growth which the fire did not burn remain intact. Until recently, most of the harvesting done by the Research Forest staff was in these 120-year-old stands of trees.