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Simulation and Analysis of the Effect of a Spruce Budworm Outbreak on Carbon Dynamics in Boreal Forests of Quebec

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Abstract

In a climate change context, the sequestration of atmospheric carbon (C) in forests is key for achieving emission targets. It is thus critical to understand how large-scale disturbances are affecting the overall forest C stocks. C dynamics in North American boreal forest ecosystems are strongly affected by the defoliation and mortality that occurs during a spruce budworm (SBW) outbreak. We used forest inventory geospatial databases, monthly climate data, spatially explicit defoliation sequence data, and the TRIPLEX-Insect model to simulate C dynamics with and without SBW disturbances in stands with different vulnerability to the SBW in the boreal forest of Quebec. Our results showed that SBW defoliation and related mortality decreased the average aboveground biomass and belowground biomass by 5.96% and 6.94% by 2017, respectively. At the same time, 21,046 km2 of forest were converted from a C sink to a source. This study provides the first quantitative analysis of the effect of a SBW outbreak on carbon dynamics for three different boreal stand types (that is, fir, spruce, and mixed fir-spruce) at a regional scale. Our results suggested that younger fir forests lost less C than either fir-spruce or spruce forests during SBW attacks between 2007 and 2017 in Quebec. This highlights the importance of considering species composition when assessing vulnerability or resilience.

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Acknowledgements

This study was a part of research project recently funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FQRNT) program and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discover Grant. We wish to thank Marie-Claude Lambert for supplying the climate data used in this analysis. We also appreciate Dr. Jonathan Boucher from SOPFEU who provided the mortality data for validation in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Québec at Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 3P8, Canada

    Zelin Liu, Changhui Peng, Timothy Work, Chunbo Huang & Daniel Kneeshaw

  2. Laurentian Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, Quebec, G1V 4C7, Canada

    Louis De Grandpré

  3. Great Lakes Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, Peterborough, Ontario, P6A 2E5, Canada

    Jean-Noël Candau

  4. College of Horticulture and Forestry Sciences, Hubei Engineering Technology Research Center for Forestry Information, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, People’s Republic of China

    Chunbo Huang

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  1. Zelin Liu
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  2. Changhui Peng
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  3. Louis De Grandpré
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Correspondence to Changhui Peng.

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Authors Contributions

ZL, CP, and DK designed study. ZL analyzed data and parametrized models. DK and LG collected and analyzed the data. J-NC and TW analyzed data. CH built the forest map and analyzed data. All authors wrote the manuscript.

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Liu, Z., Peng, C., De Grandpré, L. et al. Simulation and Analysis of the Effect of a Spruce Budworm Outbreak on Carbon Dynamics in Boreal Forests of Quebec. Ecosystems 22, 1838–1851 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-019-00377-7

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