Jakub Olesinski (PhD'11) has a really cool job. As forest health specialist for Parks Canada, he spends a lot of time in a helicopter flying over the mountain preserve forests of British Columbia and Alberta looking for disturbances and ways to mitigate them.

It's both exciting and challenging work. Jakub was on the ground when the catastrophic Jasper National Park fire ripped through the town of Jasper and surrounding forest land in the summer of 2024. "That was an unprecedented disaster that has unfortunately become our new reality," he says. "We have to be prepared for more events like the Jasper fire, because the drying and warming trend we are experiencing in western and northern Canada is not going away. It's very stressful, and makes this job even more critical."

Even with the stress, the job is a dream come true for Jakub, who imagined working in the forests of Canada since he was a boy in Poland reading books about the land. After a bachelor's degree, he worked for the Polish State Forests before coming to Canada as an international graduate student in the Faculty of Forestry. "I was aware of the amazing program at UNB and thanks to the efforts of Dr. Marek Krasowski I was able to fulfil my dream of coming to Canada to study and work in its forests."

While at UNB, Jakub studied belowground ecophysiology: the physiological process of how trees change in response to climate and with varying environmental factors. "I looked at carbon cycling and how treesallocate carbon across their different parts, especially to fine roots, and how climate warming impacts that."

He says his research at UNB played a direct role in what he would ultimately go on to do. With a young family in tow, friends at UNB and in the Polish community in Fredericton were very supportive while he worked short-term contracts a research associate for Natural Resources Canada, until an opportunity opened up in the Northwest Territories. In 2014, he and his family moved to Hay River, on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, where Jakub began working as an ecosystem forester for the Government of the Northwest Territories.

"It was an amazing opportunity and a huge challenge within a completely new environment. It's so different in the north – just the wildness and enormity of it – there are 80 million hectares of forest land! I was humbled by its pristine beauty, the vastness and remoteness. The forests up there are hard to manage because they are so inaccessible. But they are also completely ecologically driven in the north. People are very connected to the land, and the priorities are not driven by industry, because there really is no forest industry there."

"Northern Canada is ground zero for climate change. I could see it directly impacting forests at a much faster pace than anywhere else in the country."

Jakub says his experience in climate change-related research and ecophysiology knowledge from UNB were huge assets to his work in the north. "Northern Canada is ground zero for climate change. I could see it directly impacting forests at a much faster pace than anywhere else in the country. Trees are dying from drought. Insect outbreaks are impacting large swaths of forests. Because of the warming climate, insect infestations are moving north to areas that have not seen this kind of disturbances before. Huge wildfire years are happening more frequently. And then there's the permafrost thawing – you get massive flooded areas next to dying areas because of drought. You don't have to be an expert to see what's happening."

He explains that when you zoom out to see how these types of disturbance regimes occurred historically in northern Canada, you can see that what's happening now is not normal. "The droughts, wildfires, floods and insect outbreaks are much more severe and happen more often now. It has an enormous impact on carbon cycling and storage. Forests in the north have always been a carbon sink – accumulating more carbon than they emit. That's still the case in a normal year, but in a big wildfire year, that's no longer true. Historically, we've had large wildfire years every 30 years or so. We've already had two record years in the past decade. So, if the interval is shorter now, we will see the shift from carbon sink to carbon source. It's very concerning because these northern forests have been one of the largest carbon reservoirs in the world."

During his time in the north, he was responsible for forest health, climate change adaptation and silviculture. "We had a small office and we had to wear many hats in the north, yet we dealt with large-scale issues. It's a fascinating place for ecologists and foresters to work. It was hugely stimulating and I had the opportunity to collaborate with very interesting people, from Indigenous Elders to NASA scientists. I loved my time there."

"Forests in the north have always been a carbon sink – accumulating more carbon than they emit. That's still the case in a normal year, but in a big wildfire year, that's no longer true."

In 2023, however, his dream job came calling. While in the Northwest Territories, Jakub was mentored by a forest health expert at Canadian Forest Service in Alberta who taught him the skills needed to map forest disturbances and severity while flying overhead in an aircraft. When his mentor retired, Jakub took the reigns as Forest Health Specialist overseeing forest health in the seven Canadian Rocky Mountain national parks along the Alberta-British Columbia border.

It's a big job: a critical position created in response to the critical need for consistent monitoring. "Park preserves used to be left alone for the climate to solve problems naturally. That's not possible any longer, as the climate is not the control agent it used to be. I monitor for disturbances and provide advice to Parks Canada to deal with risks."

There are, unfortunately, many risks.

"The mountain pine beetle in Jasper National Park, and spruce beetle outbreaks in Glacier National Parks were out of scale to any historical records. We have to decide what we can do to prepare for, respond to, and mitigate disasters like we saw in 2024 - and we have to do it quickly. Unfortunately, evacuations are now a new reality that communities are going to have to continually face. Part of the problem is a very dense and mature forest, where historically it was a diverse mosaic of dense and non-dense areas. These densely-packed forests create a challenge even if not disturbed. But, combined with disturbances of insect outbreaks modifying forests to become even more flammable, it can lead to catastrophic events. Recognizing the important ecological role of wildfire, Parks Canada has tried for years to apply controlled burns, but they are becoming more challenging because of shortened windows of safe application caused by increased heat, drought and winds. Monitoring, providing data and thinking ahead are now more important than ever."

Through it all, Jakub remains an optimist. "Science will always help if we trust it. We need to find ways of protecting our forests – which are very important to so many people for both home and work, as well as a critical habitat for countless species. Researchers are finding ways to make them more resilient, and as long as forests can regenerate, I'm hopeful. Forests do adapt, but it's slow. And climate change is coming fast."

For his part, Jakub will be doing everything he can to monitor and provide advice on managing our forests' health. "I absolutely love it, and I'm thrilled I was able to fulfill the dream I had as a boy. I followed my heart and I'm hopefully making an impact."