Grant: Alliance Grants

The boreal forest, including regions like Abitibi (Quebec, Canada), faces significant challenges due to climate change. Shifts in temperature and precipitation patterns can impact forest ecosystems' resilience and resistance, affecting their ability to provide essential services like timber and carbon storage. For this reason, we have participated in the development of a new concept of smart forestry emphasizing the importance of real-time monitoring with automated sensors to improve predictability of climate change impacts on forest growth. The current project will establish a new experimental smart forest (AbitibiOuestSmart Forest) to monitor tree and forest growth, carbon and water fluxes, as well as plant water status in real time. Our main goal will be to better understand tree and ecosystem sensitivity to environmental variability of short duration (days to weeks), including extreme droughts. Such mechanistic understanding will lead to quantitative insights into tree and forest resistance and resilience to environmental stressors. Climate manipulation experiments (rain exclusion), eddy covariance techniques and different types of sensors will be used. The key partner of this project, the MRC Abitibi-Ouest, strongly believes that our research will contribute to its renown as a leader in sustainable local development. Indeed, the project will enable citizen participation through the development of a web platform for interactive communication of data and results. The MRC will also ensure to answer important questions raised in its Sustainable Development Plan concerning the monitoring of forest ecosystems and adaptation to climate change.