Grant: Canada Research Chairs

The boreal forest represents an essential resource for Canada and a vital carbon stock for the regulation of the climate. It is thus crucial to characterize and anticipate the climate variability in the boreal region and to study and predict the associated impacts on vegetation. Analyzing the links between climate and the boreal forest requires robust data spanning long time periods and a detailed understanding of the functioning of boreal trees. Among the possible data sources, tree-ring chronologies are ecological archives that allow analysis of climate variability and forest processes over centuries and millennia. The proposed CRC will address current knowledge gaps in tree-ring-based ecological and climatological studies for the boreal forest by: (1) exploiting rarely used tree-ring traits, (2) increasing the classical annual resolution of tree-ring-based reconstructions, and (3) considering tree physiological functioning in the analyses. A state-of-the-art laboratory for quantitative wood anatomy and ecophysiological modeling will be developed, attracting talented HQP and enhancing international collaborations. The functioning of trees will be analyzed for key periods of the last two millennia: the medieval climatic anomaly, following large volcanic eruptions, pre and post fires. Forest growth and climate reconstructions and projections for the Canadian boreal region will be improved.