Monitoring of forest response to gradual environmental changes or abrupt disturbances provides insights into how forested ecosystems operate and allows for quantification of forest health. In this chapter, we provide an overview of Smartforests Canada, a national-scale research network consisting of regional investigators who support a wealth of existing and new monitoring sites. The objectives of Smartforests are threefold: (1) establish and coordinate a network of high-precision monitoring plots across a 4400 km gradient of environmental and forest conditions, (2) synthesize the collected multivariate observations to examine the effects of global changes on complex above- and belowground forest dynamics and resilience, and (3) analyze the collected data to guide the development of the next-generation forest growth models and inform policy-makers on best forest management and adaptation strategies. We present the methodological framework implemented in Smartforests to fulfill the aforementioned objectives. We then use an example from a temperate hardwood Smartforests site in Quebec to illustrate our approach for climate-smart forestry. We conclude by discussing how information from the Smartforests network can be integrated with existing data streams, from within Canada and abroad, guiding forest management and the development of climate change adaptation strategies.

Wildland fire is the most important disturbance in the boreal forests of eastern North America, shaping the floral composition, structure and spatial arrangement. Although the long-term evolution of the frequency and quantity of burned biomass in these forests can be estimated from paleo-ecological studies, we know little about the evolution of fire sizes. We have therefore developed a methodological approach that provides insights into the processes and changes involved over time in the historical fire-vegetation-climate environment of the coniferous forests (CF) and mixedwood forests (MF) of eastern boreal North America, paying particular attention to the metric of fire size. Lacustrine charcoal particles sequestered in sediments from MF and CF regions were analyzed to reconstruct changes in estimated burned biomass, fire frequency, and their ratio interpreted as fire size (FS-index), over the last 7,000 years. A fire propagation model was used to simulate past fire sizes using both a reference landscape, where MF and CF compositions over time were prescribed using pollen reconstructions, and climate inputs provided by the HadCM3BL-M1 snapshot simulations. Lacustrine charcoals showed that Holocene FS-indices did not differ significantly between MF and CF because of the high variability in fire frequencies. However, the estimated burned biomass from MF was always lower than that from CF, significantly so since 5,000 BP. Beyond the variability, the FS-index was lower in MF than CF throughout the Holocene, with slight changes in both forests from 7,000 to 1,000 BP, and simultaneous increases over the last millennium. The fire model showed that MF fires were consistently smaller than CF fires throughout the Holocene, with larger differences in the past than today. The fire model also highlighted the fact that spring fires in both forest types have always been larger than summer fires over the last 7,000 years, which concurs with present-day fire statistics. This study illustrates how fire models, built and used today for forecasting and firefighting, can also be used to enhance our understanding of past conditions within the fire-vegetation-climate nexus.

Although lacustrine sedimentary charcoal has long been used to infer paleofires, their quantitative reconstructions require improvements of the calibration of their links with fire regimes (i.e. occurrence, area, and severity) and the taphonomic processes that affect charcoal particles between the production and the deposition in lake sediments. Charcoal particles >150?µm were monitored yearly from 2011 to 2016 using traps submerged in seven head lakes situated in flat-to-rolling boreal forest landscapes in eastern Canada. The burned area was measured, and the above-ground fire severity was assessed using the differentiated normalized burn ratio (dNBR) index, derived from LANDSAT images, and measurements taken within zones radiating 3, 15, and 30?km from the lakes. In order to evaluate potential lag effects in the charcoal record, fire metrics were assessed for the year of recorded charcoal recording (lag 0) and up to 5?years before charcoal deposition (lag 5). A total of 92 variables were generated and sorted using a Random Forest-based methodology. The most explanatory variables for annual charcoal particle presence, expressed as the median surface area, were selected. Results show that, temporally, sedimentary charcoal accurately recorded fire events without a temporal lag; spatially, fires were recorded up to 30?km from the lakes. Selected variables highlighted the importance of burned area and fire severity in explaining lacustrine charcoal. The charcoal influx was thus driven by fire area and severity during the production process. The dispersion process of particles resulted mostly of wind transportation within the regional (<30?km) source area. Overall, charcoal median surface area represents a reliable proxy for reconstructing past burned areas and fire severities.

Climate changes are expected to progressively increase extreme wildfire frequency in forests. Finding past analogs for periods of extreme biomass burning would provide valuable insights regarding what the effects of warming might be for tree species distribution, ecosystem integrity, atmospheric greenhouse gas balance, and human safety. Here, we used a network of 42 lake-sediment charcoal records across a ~2000 km transect in eastern boreal North America to infer widespread periods of wildfire activity in association with past climate conditions. The reconstructed fluctuations in biomass burning are broadly consistent with variations in ethane concentration in Greenland polar ice cores. Biomass burning fluctuations also significantly co-varied with Greenland temperatures estimated from ice cores, at least for the past 6000 years. Our retrospective analysis of past fire activity allowed us to identify two fire periods centered around 4800 and 1100 BP, coinciding with large-scale warming in northern latitudes and having respectively affected an estimated ~71% and ~57% of the study area. These two periods co-occurred with widespread decreases in mean fire-return intervals. The two periods are likely the best analogs for what could be anticipated in terms of impacts of fire on ecosystem services provided by these forests in coming decades.

Ecosystem based management in Québec is framed by reference conditions defining percentage of old-growth forest (>100-years-old) and forest composition characterizing pre-industrial forest landscapes. In the western spruce-moss bioclimatic subdomain (154?184?km2) a fire cycle estimated at 150?years was used to target that 49% of the landscape has to be composed of old-growth forest. Yet, this target was developed using past (19th–20th C.) climate and vegetation data and assume that environment and ecosystem processes are homogeneous for the entire western spruce-moss bioclimatic subdomain. The wide spatial and narrow temporal windows limit the application of reference conditions under ongoing climate change.

Our aim was to classify current vegetation heterogeneity of the western spruce-moss subdomain into homogeneous zones and to study the long-term history of fire and vegetation within these zones. This approach will help to refine forest management targets that are based upon short-term records by providing a long-term perspective that is needed for the forests to be managed within their natural range of variability. Modern forest inventories data were used along with climate, physical variables, and natural and human disturbances to study the current vegetation-environment interactions among the western spruce-moss subdomain. We also used 18 published sedimentary pollen and charcoal series to reconstruct Holocene vegetation and Fire Return Intervals (FRI).

Contemporary data revealed 4 zones with homogeneous interactions between vegetation and environment. Pollen analysis revealed three long-term vegetation paths: early successional species dominance, late to early species transition and late successional species dominance. These suggest that modern forest composition results from Holocene trajectories occurring within each zone. Holocene mean FRI (mFRI) ranged from 222 to 258 years across the subdomain, resulting in old-growth forests ranging between 64% and 68%, depending upon the zone.

Paleoecological and contemporary results support that to make forest management more sustainable, current landscape heterogeneity that arises from millennial forest composition trajectories and fire cycle dynamics should be taken into account by down-scaling the previously established reference conditions.

We present a comparative analysis of fire reconstructions from tree rings and from wood charcoal preserved in forest soils, peat and lake sediments. Our objective is to highlight the benefits and limits of different archives and proxies to reconstruct fire histories. We propose guidelines to optimize proxy and archive choice in terms of spatial and temporal scales of interest. Comparisons were performed for two sites in the boreal forest of northeastern North America. Compared to others archives, tree-ring analysis remains the best choice to reconstruct recent fires (<1000 years). For longer periods (from several centuries to millennia), lake charcoal can be used to reconstruct regional or local fire histories depending on the method used, but the focus should be on historical trends rather than on the identification of individual fire events. Charcoal preserved in peat and soils can be used to identify individual fire, but sometimes cover shorter time periods than lake archives.

Global warming could increase climatic instability and large wildfire activity in circumboreal regions, potentially impairing both ecosystem functioning and human health. However, links between large wildfire events and climatic and/or meteorological conditions are still poorly understood, partly because few studies have covered a wide range of past climate-fire interactions. We compared palaeofire and simulated climatic data over the last 7000 years to assess causes of large wildfire events in three coniferous boreal forest regions in north-eastern Canada. These regions span an east-west cline, from a hilly region influenced by the Atlantic Ocean currently dominated by Picea mariana and Abies balsamea to a flatter continental region dominated by Picea mariana and Pinus banksiana. The largest wildfires occurred across the entire study zone between 3000 and 1000 cal. BP. In western and central continental regions these events were triggered by increases in both the fire-season length and summer/spring temperatures, while in the eastern region close to the ocean they were likely responses to hydrological (precipitation/evapotranspiration) variability. The impact of climatic drivers on fire size varied spatially across the study zone, confirming that regional climate dynamics could modulate effects of global climate change on wildfire regimes.

Climate, vegetation and humans act on biomass burning at different spatial and temporal scales. In this study, we used a dense network of sedimentary charcoal records from eastern Canada to reconstruct regional biomass burning history over the last 7000 years at the scale of four potential vegetation types: open coniferous forest/tundra, boreal coniferous forest, boreal mixedwood forest and temperate forest. The biomass burning trajectories were compared with regional climate trends reconstructed from general circulation models, tree biomass reconstructed from pollen series, and human population densities. We found that non-uniform climate, vegetation and human drivers acted on regional biomass burning history. In the open coniferous forest/tundra and dense coniferous forest, the regional biomass burning was primarily shaped by gradual establishment of less climate-conducive burning conditions over 5000 years. In the mixed boreal forest an increasing relative proportion of flammable conifers in landscapes since 2000?BP contributed to maintaining biomass burning constant despite climatic conditions less favourable to fires. In the temperate forest, biomass burning was uncoupled with climatic conditions and the main driver was seemingly vegetation until European colonization, i.e. 300?BP. Tree biomass and thus fuel accumulation modulated fire activity, an indication that biomass burning is fuel-dependent and notably upon long-term co-dominance shifts between conifers and broadleaf trees.

Fire frequency is expected to increase in boreal forests over the next century owing to climate change. In Quebec (Canada), the location of the northern limit of commercial forests (c. 51 °N) was established in 2000 taking into account mainly forest productivity and fire risk. The location of the limit is currently under debate and is being re-evaluated based on a more extensive survey of the territory. We characterized the natural variability of fire occurrence (FO) in the area surrounding the northern limit, and these results are a useful contribution to discussions on the re-evaluation of its location. Regional FO over the last 7000 years was reconstructed from sedimentary charcoal records from 11 lakes located in three regions surrounding the northern limit (i.e. south, north and near the limit). Holocene simulated precipitation and temperature from a general circulation model (GCM) were used to identify the long-term interactions between climate and fire. Fire histories displayed similar trends in all three regions, with FO increasing from 7000 calibrated years before present (cal. years BP) to reach a maximum at 4000-3000 cal. years BP, before decreasing during the late-Holocene. This trend matches the simulated changes in climate, characterized by drier and warmer conditions between 7000 and 3500 cal. years BP and cooler and moister conditions between 3500 and 0 cal. years BP. Northern ecosystems displayed higher sensitivity to climate change. The natural variability of FO was narrower in the southern region compared with the limit and northern regions. An abrupt decrease in FO was recorded close to and north of the limit at 3000 cal. years BP, whereas the decrease was more gradual in the south. Synthesis and applications. We reconstructed the natural variability in fire activity over the last 7000 years near the current location of the northern limit of commercial forests in Quebec. Fire occurrences were more sensitive to climate change near to and north of the limit of commercial forestry. In the context of predicted increase in fire activity, the lower resilience of northern forests advocates against a northern repositioning of the limit of commercial forests. © 2014 The Authors.

Paleofire events obtained from the statistical treatment of sedimentary charcoal records rely on a number of assumptions and user's choices, increasing the uncertainty of reconstructio\ns. Among the assumptions made when analyzing charcoal series is the choice of a filtering method for raw Charcoal Accumulation Rate (CHARraw). As there is no ultimate CHARraw filtering method, we propose an ensemble-member approach to reconstruct fire events. We modified the commonly used procedure by including a routine replicating the analysis of a charcoal record using custom smoothing parameters. Dates of robust fire events, uncertainties in fire-return intervals and fire frequencies are derived from members' distributions. An application of the method is used to quantify uncertainties due to data treatment in two CHARraw sequences from two different biomes, subalpine and boreal.