Kamalmuk, a Gitxsan native from northwestern
British Columbia, u;derstood one role of canopy
gaps well before Sernander (19361, Jones (1945),
and Watt (1947) first formally recognized the importance
of gaps in ecological regeneration and succession.
A natural gap is formed by the death or fall of
large branches, an individual tree, or a group of trees
that results in a canopy opening, usually quantified
in terms of projected land area (m’). Many researchers
have studied ecosystem processes in canopy
gaps or described natural forests by their gap size
distribution. Just as a natural forest has a distribution
of gap sizes. a managed forest subject to harvesting
and silvicultural intervention can have a gap size
distribution. though this has rarely been quantified.
Foresters have tended to quantify response to silvicultural
manipulations at the scale of the stand (a
somewhat arbitrary unit of forest, relatively homogeneous
in site. composition. and age structure
throughout), often without regard for the fine-scale
variation within a stand.