The 2023 wildfire season in Québec set records due to extreme warm and dry conditions, burning 4.5 million hectares and indicating persistent and escalating impacts associated with climate change. This study reviews the unusual weather conditions that led to the fires, discussing their extensive impacts on the forest sector, fire management, boreal caribou habitats, and particularly the profound effects on First Nation communities. The wildfires led to significant declines in forest productivity and timber supply, overwhelming fire management resources, and necessitating widespread evacuations. First Nation territories were dramatically altered, facing severe air quality issues and disruptions. While caribou impacts were modest across the province, the broader ecological, economical, and social repercussions were considerable. To mitigate future extreme wildfire seasons, the study suggests changes in forest management practices to increase forest resilience and resistance, adapting industrial structures to changes in wood type harvested, and enhancing fire suppression and risk management strategies. It calls for a comprehensive, unified approach to risk management that incorporates the lessons learned from the 2023 fire season and accounts for ongoing climate change. The study underscores the urgent need for detailed planning and proactive measures to reduce the growing risks and impacts of wildfires in a changing climate.

La saison des feux de forêt de 2023 au Québec, marquée par des conditions extrêmement chaudes et sèches, a établi de nouveaux records en brûlant 4,5 millions d'hectares. Cette situation est directement liée aux impacts persistants et en augmentation du changement climatique. Cette étude examine les conditions météorologiques exceptionnelles ayant mené aux feux et évalue leurs impacts significatifs sur le secteur forestier, la gestion des feux, les habitats du caribou boréal, et met particulièrement en lumière les répercussions profondes sur les communautés des Premières Nations. Les feux ont entraîné une baisse significative de la productivité des forêts et de l'approvisionnement en bois, submergeant les équipes de gestion des feux et nécessitant des évacuations massives. Le territoire et les communautés des Premières Nations ont été profondément affectés, confrontés à de graves problèmes de qualité de l'air et à des bouleversements considérables. Si l'impact sur l?habitat du caribou a été modeste dans l'ensemble de la province, les répercussions écologiques, économiques et sociales ont été considérables. Pour atténuer les impacts à venir des prochaines saisons de feux de forêt extrêmes, une avenue suggérée serait de modifier les pratiques d?aménagement forestier afin d'accroître la résilience et la résistance des forêts, d'adapter les structures industrielles aux nouvelles sources d'approvisionnement en bois et d'améliorer les stratégies de lutte contre les feux et la gestion des risques. De même, une approche globale

Les caractéristiques des forêts préindustrielles permettent d?établir des états de référence pour l'aménagement durable des forêts. Cette approche historique est particulièrement pertinente pour les régions soumises à une forte influence humaine, dans lesquelles les forêts naturelles sont rares. C'est le cas de la région de Rouyn-Noranda, à l'ouest du Québec. Nous avons utilisé les archives d'arpentage disponibles pour reconstituer la composition préindustrielle des forêts boréales mixtes de cette région. ? partir d'une base de données comportant 3621 observations sur la composition historique des forêts (1909?1940), nous dressons un portrait des forêts préindustrielles et des changements survenus dans la région. ? l?époque préindustrielle, les épinettes représentaient les espèces les plus abondantes: elles étaient présentes dans 85,5 % des observations, et étaient identifiées comme dominantes (c.-à-d., les plus abondantes localement) dans 63,9 % des observations. Les épinettes tendaient à être abondantes sur l'ensemble du territoire et des types de dépôts de surface. Entre les époques préindustrielle et moderne (1980?2020), nos résultats montrent une augmentation de la fréquence des feuillus de début de succession, dont principalement le peuplier faux tremble (+28 %). Ces changements de composition semblent attribuables à la combinaison de perturbations (feux, coupes, agriculture, etc.). Nous discutons finalement des implications de ces résultats pour les stratégies d'aménagement écosystémique dans la région.

Roads are known to alter environmental conditions and the composition of road edge plant communities, particularly when exogenous materials are used as road surfacing. In this study, we evaluate the impact of gravel roads on the organic layer thickness (OLT) and aspen distribution in a boreal forest landscape of Eastern Canada. The OLT and aspen distribution were compared at different distances from the roads (0 m, 10 m, and >10 m) to determine whether a reduction in the OLT along the roads could explain the distribution of aspen along the road network, and in particular the role of the roads as habitat corridors. In addition, germination tests were carried out to determine whether mineral soil from the roads could promote aspen establishment, by comparing the germination rate of substrates consisting only of mineral soil or mosses, and substrates consisting of mosses covered with 0.5 cm or 2 cm of mineral soil. The presence of aspen in the study landscape is limited by thick organic deposits (≥50 cm). However, the thickness of these deposits is reduced to approximately 10 cm at the edges of gravel roads, in part by the transport of mineral soil from the roads. This reduction in the OLT facilitates the establishment of aspen and helps explain its distribution along the road network.

Edge habitats resulting from the construction and maintenance of forest roads favour pioneer, shade-intolerant and disturbance-adapted plant species. The effect of roads on the spread of non-native species has been frequently studied, but few studies have focused upon their effects on native tree species. We studied the effect of forest roads on the expansion dynamics of trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) in a boreal forest landscape of eastern Canada. We determined whether roads act as a habitat and dispersal corridor for trembling aspen, and whether populations that established along roads act as a starting point for aspen expansion into adjacent stands. We evaluated the effect of forest roads on the distribution of trembling aspen by surveying the vegetation along 694 km of roads. In 19 stands, we compared the density and age of individuals in 100 m transects established parallel and perpendicular to roads, to determine the role of roads. Trembling aspen is abundant along the forest road network. Forest roads act sometimes as habitat corridors for trembling aspen, but their effects on its density extend only over a short distance (10 m) on each side of the roads. The forest roads did not act as a starting point for the expansion of trembling aspen into adjacent stands. Forest roads are particularly favourable habitats for trembling aspen. Although roads did not act as a starting point for aspen dispersal away from roads, these habitats would be vulnerable to invasion following a disturbance that would reduce the thickness of the organic layer.

Long-term disturbance histories, reconstructed using diverse paleoecological tools, provide high-quality information about pre-observational periods. These data offer a portrait of past environmental variability for understanding the long-term patterns in climate and disturbance regimes and the forest ecosystem response to these changes. Paleoenvironmental records also provide a longer-term context against which current anthropogenic-related environmental changes can be evaluated. Records of the long-term interactions between disturbances, vegetation, and climate help guide forest management practices that aim to mirror “natural” disturbance regimes. In this chapter, we outline how paleoecologists obtain these long-term data sets and extract paleoenvironmental information from a range of sources. We demonstrate how the reconstruction of key disturbances in the boreal forest, such as fire and insect outbreaks, provides critical long-term views of disturbance-climate-vegetation interactions. Recent developments of novel proxies are highlighted to illustrate advances in reconstructing millennial-scale disturbance-related dynamics and how this new information benefits the sustainable management of boreal forests in a rapidly changing climate.

Although global and Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions are coherent with climate model simulations over the last millennium, reconstructed temperatures tend to diverge from simulations at smaller spatial scales. Yet, it remains unclear to what extent these regional peculiarities reflect region-specific internal climate variability or inadequate proxy coverage and quality. Here, we present a high-quality, millennial-long summer temperature reconstruction for northeastern North America, based on maximum latewood density, the most temperature-sensitive tree-ring proxy. Our reconstruction shows that a large majority (31 out of 44) of the coldest extremes can be attributed to explosive volcanic eruptions, with more persistent cooling following large tropical than extratropical events. These forced climate variations synchronize regional summer temperatures with hemispheric reconstructions and simulations at the multidecadal time scale. Our study highlights that tropical volcanism is the major driver of multidecadal temperature variations across spatial scales.

In the context of global changes, the future dynamics of trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) are uncertain in the middle of its range. An increase in climate-related mortality could occur, but the modification of disturbance regimes could also favor its expansion. In this study, we document trembling aspen dynamics over 40 years at the scale of a boreal forest landscape (10 930 km²), as well as the role of disturbances in these dynamics. The results indicate that trembling aspen has experienced a substantial expansion over the last four decades (+102% occurrence), particularly between 1987 and 1997 (+70.9% occurrence). Nevertheless, these dynamics vary both spatially and temporally, with for example a phase of weak decline since 1997 (−5.9% occurrence). Anthropogenic disturbances, particularly clear-cutting, have played a major role in the expansion of trembling aspen. This expansion could influence the response of ecosystems to climate change, by modifying both fire and insect outbreak activities.

Abstract Fire regimes in North American forests are diverse and modern fire records are often too short to capture important patterns, trends, feedbacks, and drivers of variability. Tree-ring fire scars provide valuable perspectives on fire regimes, including centuries-long records of fire year, season, frequency, severity, and size. Here, we introduce the newly compiled North American tree-ring fire-scar network (NAFSN), which contains 2562 sites, >37,000 fire-scarred trees, and covers large parts of North America. We investigate the NAFSN in terms of geography, sample depth, vegetation, topography, climate, and human land use. Fire scars are found in most ecoregions, from boreal forests in northern Alaska and Canada to subtropical forests in southern Florida and Mexico. The network includes 91 tree species, but is dominated by gymnosperms in the genus Pinus. Fire scars are found from sea level to >4000-m elevation and across a range of topographic settings that vary by ecoregion. Multiple regions are densely sampled (e.g., >1000 fire-scarred trees), enabling new spatial analyses such as reconstructions of area burned. To demonstrate the potential of the network, we compared the climate space of the NAFSN to those of modern fires and forests; the NAFSN spans a climate space largely representative of the forested areas in North America, with notable gaps in warmer tropical climates. Modern fires are burning in similar climate spaces as historical fires, but disproportionately in warmer regions compared to the historical record, possibly related to under-sampling of warm subtropical forests or supporting observations of changing fire regimes. The historical influence of Indigenous and non-Indigenous human land use on fire regimes varies in space and time. A 20th century fire deficit associated with human activities is evident in many regions, yet fire regimes characterized by frequent surface fires are still active in some areas (e.g., Mexico and the southeastern United States). These analyses provide a foundation and framework for future studies using the hundreds of thousands of annually- to sub-annually-resolved tree-ring records of fire spanning centuries, which will further advance our understanding of the interactions among fire, climate, topography, vegetation, and humans across North America.

We present the longest tree-ring chronology to date in northeastern North America (2233 years; 227 BCE – 2005 CE), resulting from several research projects conducted at the subarctic treeline in northern Quebec. This raw chronology of tree-ring width includes 464 black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P.) shrubs (krummholz) growing in wetlands and preserved within peatlands. An indexed series of 152 erect black spruce trees that have lived in wetlands is also presented, covering the period 216 BCE to 1619 CE. We compared these chronologies to a tree-ring series including 116 black spruce trees and krummholz having grown on well-drained lichen woodlands over the period 1304–2000 CE. These chronologies highlight the major climatic periods of the last two millennia. Floating chronologies dating from 2500 to 3500 years ago were also developed from trees preserved in frozen peat. Growth rings from this period are much wider than those of the last 2233 years, suggesting warm climatic conditions and permafrost-free peatlands during the transition from mid- to late Holocene. The three subarctic chronologies presented here underscore the relevance and usefulness of tree growth rings and growth forms as ecological tools to assess the influence of climate on subarctic ecosystems.