As evidence points to the importance of climate change (CC) impacts on forests, it is critical to understand how forestry and forest-dependent communities will be affected. People active in the Quebec forest sector were consulted about their perceptions on the most important potential impacts and adaptation measures. Preoccupations covered many aspects of natural ecosystems, forest-based communities, and industries. Expected impacts and adaptation measures were grouped according to biomes and sectors. Prioritized impacts included increases in extreme meteorological events and natural disturbances. Impacts were also expected for human or economic systems such as reductions in wood volume and quality, difficulties in accessing forests, and additional costs for forest operations. Adaptation was perceived to come from new policies, a greater awareness, and local and regional adjustments to forest operations and management. Identified barriers to adaptation included lack of knowledge or understanding of CC impacts, lack of scientific support and knowledge transfer, and lack of leadership in CC issues at a regional scale. This synthesis will help orient future needs in climate-sensitive forest management planning and identify ways to increase adaptive capacity of the forest sector.Keywords: climate change, adaptation measures, impacts, perception, barriers to adaptation, forest management, Quebec, Canada, forest sector RÉSUMÉLes impacts des changements climatiques (CCs) sur la forêt sont déjà observés et iront en s'amplifiant dans le futur. Dans ce contexte, il importe de comprendre comment les communautés et l'industrie forestière seront affectées. Des professionnels du secteur forestier québécois ont été consultés lors d'un atelier afin de recueillir leurs perceptions des impacts potentiels des CCs et des possibles mesures d'adaptation. Les préoccupations touchaient les écosystèmes naturels, ainsi que les collectivités et l'industrie forestière. Les impacts identifiés incluaient l'augmentation des évènements météorologiques extrêmes et des perturbations naturelles, une diminution quantitative et qualitative du bois, ainsi que de plus grandes difficultés d'accès aux territoires et des coûts additionnels pour les opérations. Les mesures d'adaptation pourraient comprendre de nouvelles règlementations, une meilleure sensibilisation aux enjeux, et des ajustements locaux et régionaux dans la gestion et les opérations. Les barrières à l'adaptation identifiées incluaient une faible compréhension des enjeux au niveau des intervenants du milieu forestier, ainsi qu'un manque de soutien scientifique, de transfert des connaissances, et de leadership à l' échelle régionale. Cette synthèse aidera à orienter les besoins en matière de planification et de gestion et à identifier des solutions pour augmenter la capacité d'adaptation du secteur forestier. Mots
Forest management generally simplifies forest structure and composition with some negative impacts in terms of biodiversity and resilience. Thus, maintaining structural complexity is increasingly cited as an objective of sustainable forest management. Different initiatives have been proposed to use partial cuts to increase the complexity of forests. Using “the length of description” of forest patterns as a novel measure of complexity in forests, the effects of two intensities of partial cuts were compared to those found in 34-year-old secondary forests and 86-year-old primary (post-fire) forests. Our results show that partial cuts increase the complexity of forest patterns as compared to mature and secondary forests.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.