Journal ArticleDOI
An introduction to Canada’s boreal zone: ecosystem processes, health, sustainability, and environmental issues
TLDR
The region presently occupied by Canada's boreal zone has experienced dramatic changes during the past 3 million years as the climate cooled and repeated glaciations affected both the biota and the landscape as discussed by the authors.Abstract:
The boreal zone and its ecosystems provide numerous provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services. Because of its resources and its hydroelectric potential, Canada’s boreal zone is important to the country’s resource-based economy. The region presently occupied by Canada’s boreal zone has experienced dramatic changes during the past 3 million years as the climate cooled and repeated glaciations affected both the biota and the landscape. For about the past 7000 years, climate, fire, insects, diseases, and their interactions have been the most important natural drivers of boreal ecosystem dynamics, including rejuvenation, biogeochemical cycling, maintenance of productivity, and landscape variability. Layered upon natural drivers are changes increasingly caused by people and development and those related to human-caused climate change. Effects of these agents vary spatially and temporally, and, as global population increases, the demands and impacts on ecosystems will likely increase. Understanding how humans directly affect terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in Canada’s boreal zone and how these effects and actions interact with natural disturbance agents is a prerequisite for informed and adaptive decisions about management of natural resources, while maintaining the economy and environment upon which humans depend. This paper reports on the genesis and present condition of the boreal zone and its ecosystems and sets the context for a detailed scientific investigation in subsequent papers published in this journal on several key aspects: carbon in boreal forests; climate change consequences, adaptation, and mitigation; nutrient and elemental cycling; protected areas; status, impacts, and risks of non-native species; factors affecting sustainable timber harvest levels; terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity; and water and wetland resources.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Comparison of snowpack structure in gaps and under the canopy in a humid boreal forest
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors assessed differences in snowpack microstructure in small forest gaps and under the canopy of a humid boreal site in eastern Canada during the winter of 2018-2019, and found that small, rounded grains with a larger SSA than that of faceted crystals prevailed in the gaps.
Dissertation
Postglacial Reconstruction of Fire History from a Small Lake in Southwest Yukon using Sedimentary Charcoal and Pollen
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a table of contents and a list of FIGURES and ACRONYMS for the first chapter of the book "ChAPTER One" (Ch. 1).
Journal ArticleDOI
Solar radiation drives methane emissions from the shoots of Scots pine
Salla Tenhovirta,Lukas Kohl,Markku Koskinen,Marjo Patama,Anna Lintunen,Alessandro Zanetti,Rauna Lilja,Mari Pihlatie +7 more
TL;DR: In this article , the authors measured the CH4 fluxes from the shoots of Pinus sylvestris (Scots pine) and Picea abies (Norway spruce) saplings in a static, non-steadystate chamber setup to investigate if the shoot of boreal conifers are a source of CH4 during spring.
Journal ArticleDOI
Evaluating the Performance of a Forest Succession Model to Predict the Long-Term Dynamics of Tree Species in Mixed Boreal Forests Using Historical Data in Northern Ontario, Canada
Guy R. Larocque,F. Wayne Bell +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, a succession gap model ZELIG-CFS was evaluated for mixed boreal forests composed of black spruce (Picea mariana [Mill] B.S.P.), balsam fir (Abies balsamea [L.] Mill), jack pine (Pinus banksiana L.), white spruce, trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx), white birch (Betula papyrifera Marsh), northern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis L.), American larch (Larix laric
Global‐Scale Shifts in Rooting Depths Due To Anthropocene Land Cover Changes Pose Unexamined Consequences for Critical Zone Functioning
TL;DR: In this paper , the root depth distributions are shown to change globally as a consequence of agricultural expansion truncating depths above which 99% of root biomass occurs (D99) by ∼60 cm, and woody encroachment linked to anthropogenic climate change extending D99 in other regions by ∼38 cm.
References
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Related Papers (5)
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Yude Pan,Richard Birdsey,Jingyun Fang,Jingyun Fang,Richard A. Houghton,Pekka E. Kauppi,Werner A. Kurz,Oliver L. Phillips,Anatoly Shvidenko,Simon L. Lewis,Josep G. Canadell,Philippe Ciais,Robert B. Jackson,Stephen W. Pacala,A. David McGuire,Shilong Piao,Aapo Rautiainen,Stephen Sitch,Daniel J. Hayes +18 more