Université de Montréal
M.Sc. candidate
Supervisor: Marie-Hélène Brice
Pierre Legendre
Pierre-Luc Couillard, Direction des inventaires forestiers (MRNF)
Start: 2023-05-01
End: 2025-04-30

Project

Plant diversity changes in balsam fir-yellow birch forests of eastern Quebec (Canada)
Biodiversity decline observed globally is alarming. The leading causes of this issue are anthropogenic activities such as habitat destruction and changes in land use. With the growing impact of climate change, biodiversity tends to deteriorate even further. Though we may protect biodiversity for its beauty and because of our moral responsibility, it is also essential to a healthy and balanced ecosystem. We must, therefore, monitor biodiversity loss so we can help reduce it, considering the ongoing increase of climate change, human population growth and anthropogenic activities. A significant inventory of Quebec plant biodiversity was done from 1986 to 2000 and is now being repeated since 2020. The Moyennes Appalaches, located in eastern Quebec next to the St-Lawrence River, is an ecological region where this second inventory is complete, so it provides a great opportunity to explore biodiversity changes that have happened in the last decades. The objectives of this study are to quantify and define the possible changes of plant diversity that have occurred during a 30-year period as well as identify the causes of those changes in the Moyennes Appalaches region.

Keywords

Biodiversité, Végétation, changements climatiques, Perturbations