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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Book ChapterDOI
A Circumpolar Perspective on the Contribution of Trees to the Boreal Forest Carbon Balance
TL;DR: In this paper , a tree-centered overview of the boreal forest carbon balance and a circumpolar perspective on the contribution of trees to boreal carbon dynamics is presented, together with an outlook addressing the trajectories of the circumboreal C dynamics in response to projected environmental changes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Characterizing Tree Species in Northern Boreal Forests Using Multiple-Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis and Multi-Temporal Satellite Imagery
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors examined whether image end-member spectra can be identified using forest inventory information to derive dominant tree species classifications using multiple-end-member spectral mixture analysis (MESMA) and single-and multi-date Landsat imagery of a forested area in the Northwest Territories, Canada.
Book ChapterDOI
Forest Health in the Anthropocene
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors describe the benefits of forests to all people in the form of ecosystem services, and they provide a wide range of vital environmental and socioeconomic benefits to all humans.
Journal ArticleDOI
Reassessment of growth-climate relations indicates the potential for decline across Eurasian boreal larch forests
TL;DR: In this article , a method for constructing temporally flexible and physiologically relevant temperature series to reassess growth-temperature relations of larch across boreal Eurasia was developed.
References
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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