Regional analyses assessing the vulnerabilities of forest ecosystems and the forest sector to climate change are key to consider the heterogeneity of climate change impacts but also the fact that risks, opportunities and adaptation capacities might differ regionally. Here we provide the Regional Integrated Assessment of climate change on Quebec’s forests, a work that involved several research teams and that focused on climate change impacts on Quebec’s commercial forests and on potential adaptation solutions. Our work showed that climate change will alter several ecological processes within Quebec’s forests. These changes will result in important modifications in forest landscapes. Harvest will cumulate with climate change effects to further alter future forest landscapes which will also have consequences on wildlife habitat (including woodland caribou habitat), avian biodiversity, carbon budget and a variety of forest landscape values for Indigenous peoples. The adaptation of the forest sector, will be crucial to mitigate the impacts of climate change on forest ecosystem goods and services and improve their resilience. Moving forward, a broad range of adaptation measures, notably through reducing harvest levels, should be explored to help strike a balance among social, ecological and economic values. We conclude that without climate adaptation strong negative economical and ecological impacts will likely affect Quebec’s forests.
Related Resources
Restoration of Linear Disturbances From Oil-and-gas Exploration in Boreal Landscapes: How can Network Models Help?
Resource Date:
2023
Novel Multilayer Network Analysis to Assess Variation in the Spatial Co-occurrences of Close Kin in Wild Caribou Populations
Resource Date:
November
2023
Movement Ecology of Endangered Caribou During a COVID-19 Mediated Pause in Winter Recreation
Resource Date:
October
2023
Meta-analysis Reveals that Enhanced Practices Accelerate Vegetation Recovery During Peatland Restoration
Resource Date:
October
2023
Organization
Was this helpful?
|