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

The reproductive ecology of the semi-serotinous species black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP) in northern boreal forests remains poorly understood. There is a general lack of data on cone/seed production and viability as a function of biotic tree-level characteristics and abiotic variables. No studies currently exist to quantify these differences over a large gradient in temperature, elevation, and precipitation. Extensive physical, ecological, dendrometric, and reproductive data were collected from young to very old black spruce stands in northern Quebec. ANOVA and general linear mixed models were used to examine interannual cone production, and the relative importance of the biotic and abiotic explanatory factors in determining total cone production; length of the cone-bearing zone; filled seeds per cone; proportion of filled seeds; and seed viability. The results illustrate that the reproductive ecology of black spruce in northern cold forests is mainly explained by biotic variables such as age and diameter at breast height, and by abiotic variables related to temperature such as elevation, length of the growing season, and growing degree-days. Black spruce exhibits a lower reproductive potential in northern cold forests, making it possibly less resilient to increased fire frequency, particularly in unproductive and very young or very old stands.

Increase in forest disturbance due to land use as well as climate change has led to an expansion of young forests worldwide, which drives global carbon dynamics and timber allocation. This study presents a method that combines a single airborne LiDAR acquisition and time since harvest maps to model height growth of post-logged black spruce-dominated forests in a 1700 km2 eastern Canadian boreal landscape. We developed a random forest model in which forest height at a 20 m × 20 m pixel resolution is a function of stand age, combined with environmental variables (e.g., slope, site moisture, surface deposit). Our results highlight the model's strong predictive power: least-square regression between predicted and observed height of our validation dataset was very close to the 1:1 relation and strongly supported by validation metrics (R2 = 0.74; relative RMSE = 19%). Environmental variables thus allowed to accurately predict forest productivity with a high spatial resolution (20 m × 20 m pixels) and predicted forest height growth in the first 50 years after logging ranged between 16 and 27 cm·year−1 across the whole study area, with a mean of 20.5 cm·year−1. The spatial patterns of potential height growth were strongly linked to the effect of topographical variables, with better growth rates on mesic slopes compared to poorly drained soils. Such models could have key implications in forest management, for example to maintain forest ecosystem services by adjusting the harvesting rates depending on forest productivity across the landscapes.

Tree-related microhabitats (hereafter, “TreMs”) are key components of forest biodiversity but they are still poorly known in North American hardwood forests. The spatial patterns of living trees bearing TreMs (hereafter, “TreM-trees”) also remain to be determined. As logging practices can lead to a loss of TreM-trees and of their associated biodiversity, it is essential to identify the factors explaining TreM occurrence to better integrate them into forest management. We therefore inventoried TreMs in 4 0.5-ha survey strips in northern hardwood forests in Quebec, Canada, while recording the spatial location of each tree. Two strips were located in unmanaged old-growth forests, and 2 were in forests managed under selection cutting. All 4 stands were dominated by sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.) and American beech (Fagus grandifolia Ehrn.). Beech bark disease, an exotic pathology, was observed in all the strips.

1. A better understanding of how disturbance impacts tree diversity at different scales is essential for our ability to conserve and manage forest ecosystems in the context of global changes. Here we test the impacts of land use?related disturbances on tree diversity since the 19th century across a broad region (>150,000 km2) of northern temperate forests in eastern Canada.
2. We used a large and unique dataset of early land surveys conducted during the 19th century (>130,000 species lists), along with modern forest inventories (>80,000 plots), to analyse long?term changes in taxonomic and functional tree diversity at several scales (grid cell resolutions ranging from 12.5 to 1,600 km2; we refer to one grid cell as a ‘landscape’).
3. Our results show that land use?related disturbances have led simultaneously to (a) increased diversity within landscapes and a (b) homogenization at the regional scale (i.e. decreased composition dissimilarity among landscapes). These trends were found for both taxonomic diversity and functional diversity, with temporal changes more pronounced for taxonomic than functional diversity. We also found an increase over time in the strength of correlations between environmental variables and diversity both within and among landscapes.
4. Synthesis. Our results support the idea that human?induced impacts on biodiversity are strongly scale?dependent and not necessarily associated with biodiversity loss. This highlights possible ways that human?driven changes in tree diversity might impact forest resistance and resilience to future global changes.

The impact of traditional even-aged forest management on landscape age structure, tree composition, and connectivity has been well documented. Very little, however, is known about the impact on stand structural diversity. This study aims to compare the structural and abiotic characteristics of forest stands disturbed by clearcut logging and by stand-replacing fire in Quebec’s boreal landscapes. We hypothesized that unlike fire, logging specifically targeted stands having a higher economic value, i.e., merchantable volume, leaving altered forest characteristics on post-harvested landscapes. We compared two aerial forest surveys of a 2200 km2 study area, one survey completed before any logging activity (preindustrial survey; 1980s), and the second survey collected >10 years after logging activity (modern survey; 2000s). Forest stands at the time of the preindustrial survey were primary forests. We identified stands as either burned, logged, or left aside after forest management of the area (remaining stands) between the two surveys and compared their structural and abiotic characteristics using logistic regression. The structural and abiotic characteristics of burned and logged stands differed significantly. Relative to the burned stands, logged stands were older, denser, and marked by poorer drainage and a higher proportion of black spruce; therefore post-harvest and post-burn landscapes differed in terms of their structural diversities. Traditional even-aged forest management has significantly altered the boreal forest landscape by targeting specific stands having higher economic value and leaving behind stands of lower economic value. Remaining high economic stands should be protected, and a more balanced approach to harvesting must be used in the context of ecosystem-based management.

Predicting future ecosystem dynamics depends critically on an improved understanding of how disturbances and climate change have driven long-term ecological changes in the past. Here we assembled a dataset of >100,000 tree species lists from the 19th century across a broad region (>130,000km2) in temperate eastern Canada, as well as recent forest inventories, to test the effects of changes in anthropogenic disturbance, temperature and moisture on forest dynamics. We evaluate changes in forest composition using four indices quantifying the affinities of co-occurring tree species with temperature, drought, light and disturbance. Land-use driven shifts favouring more disturbance-adapted tree species are far stronger than any effects ascribable to climate change, although the responses of species to disturbance are correlated with their expected responses to climate change. As such, anthropogenic and natural disturbances are expected to have large direct effects on forests and also indirect effects via altered responses to future climate change.

In the context of ecosystem management, the present study aims to compare the natural and the present-day forested landscapes of a large territory in Quebec (Canada). Using contemporary and long-term fire cycles, each natural forest landscape is defined according to the variability of its structure and composition, and compared to the present-day landscape. This analysis was conducted to address the question of whether human activities have moved these ecosystems outside the range of natural landscape variability.

Context

Although logging has affected circumboreal forest dynamics for nearly a century, very few studies have reconstructed its influence on landscape structure at the subcontinental scale.

Objectives

This study aims to document spatiotemporal patterns of logging and fire since the introduction of logging in the early twentieth-century, and to evaluate the effects of these disturbances on landscape structure.

Methods

We used historical (1940–2009) logging and fire maps to document disturbance patterns across a 195,000-km2 boreal forest landscape of eastern Canada. We produced multitemporal (1970s–2010s) mosaics providing land cover status using Landsat imagery.

Results

Logging significantly increased the rate of disturbance (+74 %) in the study area. The area affected by logging increased linearly with time resulting in a significant rejuvenation of the landscape along the harvesting pattern (south–north progression). From 1940 to 2009, fire was the dominant disturbance and showed a more random spatial distribution than logging. The recent increase of fire influence and the expansion of the proportion of area classified as unproductive terrestrial land suggest that regeneration failures occurred.

Conclusions

This study reveals how logging has modified the disturbances dynamics, following the progression of the logging frontier. Future management practices should aim for a dispersed spatial distribution of harvests to generate landscape structures that are closer to natural conditions, in line with ecosystem-based management. The challenges of defining sustainable practices will remain complex with the predicted increase in fire frequency, since this factor, in combination with logging, can alter both the structure and potentially the resilience of boreal forest.