Story of the UBC Tree Canopy Interception Research Project

Research in an Urban Setting

The UBC Tree Canopy Interception Research Project will  quantify the proportion of rainfall intercepted by the tree canopy in an urban forest.

“The project is precedent-setting, both in terms of the research scope and the coalition of funders. The Province of British Columbia, the Greater Vancouver Regional District, and the Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia funded the project start-up. When the University of British Columbia recently obtained a research grant from the Canadian Water Network, this brought a national focus to the project,” stated Kim Stephens, Program Coordinator for the Water Sustainability Action Plan for BC.

According to Dr. Markus Weiler, the lead researcher for the Tree Canopy Interception Project and the Chair of Forest Hydrology at UBC, “While considerable research has been undertaken in forest stands in the natural environment, very little has been done in an urban setting anywhere in North America. One of our research interests is to determine the effectiveness of a single tree versus that for a cluster of trees. We will explore and quantify the variables influencing the interception process. We will also investigate the effects of tree density, tree structure and tree species on rainfall interception.”

To Learn More:

To download a PowerPoint presentation that provides an overview of the project scope, please click on this link to The Story of the UBC Tree Canopy Interception Research Project

To learn more about how the project is bringing science into the community, click here.