Tree Planting & Forest Stewardship

Over the past several years, we have collected questions and topics of interest from landowners and planting partners, including how best to transition from newly planted trees to healthy, resilient, forested landscapes. In a recent survey, we also specifically heard from the farming community that they wanted more information on each stage of managing their growing forests.

Maintaining your trees following ice storms and how to prevent future damage.

Beech bark disease (BBD) has caused the death of thousands of beech trees in the Muskoka region since 2010 and continues to spread.

We are proud to have played a key role in the creation of a new Afforestation Guide for Southern Ontario from the Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry (NDMNRF).

To demonstrate the value derived from tree planting in Southern Ontario, Forests Ontario commissioned Green Analytics to conduct an economic assessment of tree planting. This report presents the results of that assessment. There are two components to the assessment: the first focuses on the jobs and the gross domestic product (GDP) impact resulting from Forests Ontario’s tree planting activities; and the second focuses on the ecosystem services that are provided to people living near the areas that have been planted.

Forests are an important natural resource as they slow the accumulation of atmospheric carbon through the process of carbon sequestration.

This paper summarizes much of the accumulated knowledge related to tree seed acquisition, seed management, identifies some of the species-specific complexities, and reviews program management strategies undertaken in Ontario and in other jurisdictions. It also attempts to forecast what will be required in the future to address universal opportunities and challenges posed by changes to climate, loss in biodiversity, species at risk, invasive species, and landscape sustainability, all from a tree seed perspective.

Land stewardship means caring for our land, air and water and sustaining the natural processes on which life depends.

This discussion paper assembles information related to both conventional afforestation and more recently applied afforestation approaches having an ecological restoration focus, and to organize it in a format that will facilitate considerations related to methodologies, expected short-term and long-term results and relevant costs.

Our health and well-being are intricately interconnected with the health of our natural environment. Trees and forests are integral components of healthy ecosystems that support healthy human populations. Forests and green spaces have also been linked to a significant decline in stress, improved rehabilitation, faster hospital recovery rates, and a decrease in the severity of symptoms in attention deficit disorders. By highlighting the links between human health and the health of rural and urban forests, Forests Ontario (formerly Trees Ontario) hopes to increase support for tree planting initiatives and stimulate collaborative action to significantly enhance and restore forest cover across Ontario.

Our natural landscapes have a powerful ability to address climate change, with forests in particular playing an important role. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change, from the atmosphere and use the carbon to build their trunks, branches, and roots, releasing oxygen as a by-product. While most climate change mitigation efforts focus on reducing carbon emissions, trees actually remove carbon from the air. In addition to playing a proactive role in addressing climate change via carbon sequestration, forests also mitigate the associated impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather.