I am student of environmental sciences, so I am here to improve my knowledge about that as much as possible. I have been working with bryophytes the last years. I love the field and the landscapes.

Projet de recherche : Remote sensing of bryophytes in remote boreal forests: development of a tool for landscape planning.

The economy of remote regions in Northern Canada depends on two conflicting business sectors: exploitation activities and tourism and recreation, both based in available ecosystem services. The development of exploitation activities leads to disturbances in the landscape negatively influencing biodiversity which is the main driver of ecosystem processes and functions on which depend ecosystem service provision. In remote boreal forests, where tree diversity is especially poor, bryophytes play a crucial role in the maintenance ecosystem functioning as they are the main ground vegetation cover layer and account for a significant fraction of biodiversity. Therefore, the acquisition and integration of knowledge about bryophyte spatial distribution and diversity hotspot location into ecological planning may greatly facilitate the conservation of biodiversity along with ecosystem service provision. To reach these objectives in the vast and often inaccessibility boreal forests, remote sensing appears as a powerful information source since it offers a non-expensive detection method for remotely assessing biodiversity over large areas. Medium (30 m) and high (3 m) resolution remote sensing data will be used to generate both habitat variables and disturbance variables (as proxies of fire dynamic processes) and integrate them into species distribution models with the aim of developing an ecological planning tool in remote areas to identify sites of high ecological value to exclude them from industrial development. This will improve the knowledge about bryophyte distribution and the factors influencing their distribution patterns in remote boreal forests.