Forestry and climate change mitigation in Quebec (Canada)

We have estimated that for Quebec, a province of eastern Canada, an ambitious climate change mitigation portfolio of actions mobilizing the forest lands of the province and the wood processing industries could generate annual greenhouse gas reductions varying from 0.5 to 6.7 Mt CO₂ eq/year by 2030. Implementing these actions requires detailed knowledge of the territory and dynamics of forest ecosystems and the links between forests and societal needs for materials and energy. In this context, our simulation results suggest partial-cut harvesting, when used as an alternative to clear-cut harvesting in the boreal forests of Quebec, can be a promising way of supplying high-quality wood products to markets and maintaining carbon stocks in ecosystems, although field data do not always support this promising view about partial cut. Conversely, afforestation measures such as tree planting on abandoned agricultural lands do not appear to provide benefits in the context of Quebec. Most of these lands supported forest ecosystems before their clearing for agriculture, and field data suggest that they can revert relatively quickly to natural succession leading to a forest cover and sequestering large quantities of carbon without the need for artificial plantation. Moreover, the change in surface albedo and associated radiative forcing incurred by the establishment of a coniferous plantation on a previously non-forested land can be substantial due to the high latitude and long snow-covered winter season of Quebec; the deciduous-dominated natural succession can lower this effect. Nevertheless, our research demonstrates that improving the management of the end-of-life of wood products by preventing their landfilling (which is still very common in Quebec) through increased wood cascading use or increasing the recovery and use of landfill methane would yield significantly higher climate benefits than any forest management action.