Twenty-year recovery of managed stand, in structure and composition, in boreal mixedwood stands of northwestern Quebec
Abstract
The natural disturbance-based management (NDBM) aims to maintain specific structural and compositional attributes of natural forests in managed stands. Operationally, NDBM relies on diversifying and adapting silvicultural practices, including partial harvesting (PC), to expand the range of options beyond that of simply clearcuts (CC). Established in 1998, the Sylviculture et Aménagement Forestier Écosystémique (SAFE) project evaluates this potential in hardwood, mixedwood, and coniferous stands in northwestern Québec, Canada. Our results confirmed a part of the NDBM objectives, i.e., PC allowed the maintenance of stands with mixed structure and composition, constituting an interesting complement to CC, which reset stand regeneration. However, PC did not accelerate the stand transition to later stages with less intensive harvesting or to earlier stages with more intensive harvesting. We essentially had an initial impact, delaying or stopping the stand evolution that dissipates over time and more quickly with less intensive harvesting. Furthermore, our results did not support the ability of PC to enhance the development of old-growth attributes like deadwood. Despite the 20-year horizon of this study, further field surveys will be required in the future to better understand the impact of different silvicultural treatments on forest productivity and biodiversity preservation throughout a forest rotation.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Canadian Journal of Forest Research
Volume 53 • Number 7 • July 2023
Pages: 478 - 490
History
Received: 6 December 2022
Accepted: 7 February 2023
Accepted manuscript online: 16 February 2023
Version of record online: 20 March 2023
Copyright
© 2023 The Author(s). Permission for reuse (free in most cases) can be obtained from copyright.com.
Data Availability Statement
Data generated or analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Key Words
Authors
Author Contributions
Conceptualization: MN, TTW, NJF
Data curation: MN
Formal analysis: MN, MS
Funding acquisition: NJF
Investigation: MN
Methodology: MN, TTW, MS, NJF
Project administration: TTW, NJF
Resources: NJF
Software: MN, MS
Supervision: TTW, NJF
Validation: MN, TTW, NJF
Visualization: MN, TTW, MS, NJF
Writing – original draft: MN
Writing – review & editing: MN, TTW, MS, NJF
Competing Interests
The authors declare that there are no competing interests.
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Marion Noualhaguet, Timothy T. Work, Maxence Soubeyrand, and Nicole J. Fenton. 2023. Twenty-year recovery of managed stand, in structure and composition, in boreal mixedwood stands of northwestern Quebec. Canadian Journal of Forest Research.
53(7): 478-490. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfr-2022-0309
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