Modeling paludification and fire impacts on the forest productivity of a managed landscape using valuable indicators: the example of the Clay Belt

Abstract

In areas sensitive to forest management, paludification and successive disturbances in boreal forest can affect forest regeneration negatively, sometimes resulting in stand opening. As these negative effects on forest productivity are not fully considered in strategic management planning, a new landscape dynamics model integrating fire, paludification, forest harvesting, and regeneration failure was used to assess these impacts in a large forest management unit (10 828 km2) of northwestern Québec. Two reforestation scenarios, one based on the accessibility of the areas to be treated and the other aimed at restoring all burned and paludified areas to production were compared with one with no intervention. The success of the scenarios was evaluated using the predicted volume harvested, the proportion of closed or opened stands areas, which is an indicator of productivity, and the cost of reforestation and the royalties associated with harvesting. Harvesting the paludified areas without reforesting would lead to a sharp increase in open stands areas (+17.3%). The strategy of reforesting accessible areas is the most promising for achieving sustainable forest management targets. The monitoring of maximum potential volume and the closed forest area as indicators of landscape productivity provides the ability to anticipate problems earlier than with the conventional forest planning indicators.