Banksia laricina

• At the current rate, this warming will most likely climb to 2°C before 2100, causing climate disruption around the world.
• This article is part of La Conversation Canada’s series The boreal forest: A thousand secrets, a thousand dangers La Conversation Canada invites you to take a virtual walk in the heart of the boreal forest.
• We are working within the research infrastructure Carbone boréal carbon offset program to try to answer this question.

From global to local

• This area is roughly the equivalent of half of the area of Québec’s Île d'Orléans, or a little less than a quarter of the island of Montréal.
• But what happens on a smaller scale, depending on local characteristics and the tree species actually present in the stands?
• These are the kinds of questions that motivated a team of UQAC researchers to launch the Carbone boréal project in 2008.

An original infrastructure

• This characteristic qualifies them as non-forests, according to the definition of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
• Because of a lack of seeds and degraded soil conditions, these non-forests do not re-densify over time.
• Carbone boréal is a research infrastructure that is unique in the world for its objectives, approach and funding.


After 15 years of research and over 1.5 million trees planted and verified, these three hypotheses have been proven and the plantings carried out are beginning to answer new research questions.

Questions and answers

• We also demonstrated the importance of site selection in optimizing carbon sequestration and developed new equations to assess tree biomass using non-destructive measurements.
• Further work is underway to quantify soil carbon loss from scarification and net additional carbon accumulation over 20 years.
• A key concern raised by climate models is how afforestation in the boreal zone actually affects the climate.
• Our team will tackle these questions in the winter of 2023.