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Article

Assessing the Cumulative Impacts of Forest Management on Forest Age Structure Development and Woodland Caribou Habitat in Boreal Landscapes: A Case Study from Two Canadian Provinces

by
Brendan Mackey
1,*,
Carly Campbell
1,
Patrick Norman
1,
Sonia Hugh
1,
Dominick A. DellaSala
2,
Jay R. Malcolm
3,
Mélanie Desrochers
4 and
Pierre Drapeau
4
1
Climate Action Beacon, Griffith University, Southport, QLD 4222, Australia
2
Wild Heritage, A Project of Earth Island Institute, 2150 Allston Way Ste 460, Berkeley, CA 94704, USA
3
Institute of Forestry and Conservation, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3E4, Canada
4
Centre for Forest Research, Département des Sciences Biologiques, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, QC H2X 3Y7, Canada
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Land 2024, 13(1), 6; https://doi.org/10.3390/land13010006
Submission received: 1 October 2023 / Revised: 13 December 2023 / Accepted: 16 December 2023 / Published: 19 December 2023
(This article belongs to the Section Landscape Ecology)
Browse Figures
Versions Notes

Abstract

:
The Canadian boreal forest biome has been subjected to a long history of management for wood production. Here, we examined the cumulative impacts of logging on older forests in terms of area, distribution and patch configuration in the managed forest zones of the Eastern Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. We also examined the consequences of these cumulative impacts on a once widely distributed and now threatened species, the woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou). The cumulative area of recently logged forest (since ~1976) was 14,024,619 ha, with 8,210,617 ha in Quebec and 5,814,002 ha in Ontario. The total area of older forests was 21,249,341 ha, with 11,840,474 ha in Quebec and 9,408,867 ha in Ontario. Patch statistics revealed that there were 1,085,822 older forests with core patches < 0.25 ha and an additional 603,052 < 1.0 ha. There were 52 > 10,00–50,000 ha and 8 < 50,000 ha. Older forest patches (critical caribou habitat) in the 21 local population ranges totalled 6,103,534 ha, distributed among ~387,102 patches with 362,933 < 10 ha and 14 > 50,000 ha. The median percentage of local population ranges that was disturbed was 53.5%, with Charlevoix having the maximum (90.3%) and Basse Côte-Nord the least (34.9%). Woodland caribou local population ranges with disturbed suitable habitats >35% are considered unable to support self-sustaining populations. We found that for the 21 caribou local population ranges examined, 3 were at very high risk (>75% area disturbed), 16 at high risk (>45 ≤ 75% area disturbed), and 2 at low risk (≤35% area disturbed). Major changes are needed in boreal forest management in Ontario and Quebec for it to be ecologically sustainable, including a greater emphasis on protection and restoration for older forests, and to lower the risks for caribou populations.

1. Introduction

A major challenge in reaching sustainability in natural resource management is understanding the long-term, cumulative impacts of land use on ecosystem integrity and responding with evidence-based adaptive management. Ecosystem integrity refers to the ability of ecosystems to maintain key ecological processes, recover from disturbances and adapt to new conditions, given the prevailing environmental drivers and perturbations, and continue the natural processes of regeneration [1]. The circumpolar boreal forest biome has now been subject to a long history of management for wood production, and an important focus of research has been the cumulative environmental impacts of logging on water [2], biodiversity [3,4,5], understory vegetation and coarse woody debris [6], and forest landscapes’ age structure [7].
While tropical forests have been the focus of extensive research on biodiversity losses from deforestation and degradation [8], the boreal forest biome also contains globally significant environmental values that are at risk [9]. The boreal forest diversity is characterized by the high landscape-level diversity of stands varying in age, structure, and composition, which generates a wide spectrum of habitats for native species [10]. A major challenge in the boreal forest is accessing accurate information on and assessing the cumulative impacts of land use activities over vast extents of boreal forest landscapes. A further complicating factor is that the ecosystems of the boreal forest are subject to natural disturbance regimes, such as forest fires and insect outbreaks [11]. Hence, the distribution of younger, mature, and older seral stages across the landscape maybe the result of natural disturbance regimes, logging, or both. It follows that data on the disturbance history are required to attribute the origin of forest stand age.
The Canadian boreal zone is dominated by coniferous trees such as Picea glauca, Picea mariana, Larix laricina, Abies balsamea, and Pinus banksiana, but large areas are also covered by shade-intolerant deciduous trees such as Populus tremuloides, Populus balsamifera, and Betula papyrifera, either in pure stands or, more commonly, intermixed with conifers [12]. The primary drivers of boreal ecosystem dynamics are wildfires, alongside the secondary drivers of insects, diseases, and their interactions [13]. Natural boreal forests, therefore, are not only composed of young postfire stands but also include significant proportions of old-growth stands characterized by different structures and dynamics [14].
Clearcutting is the dominant silvicultural system in use in the managed forest estate of Ontario and Quebec, where most of the overstory trees in the management unit are removed over a short period of time to create a fully exposed microenvironment for the establishment of a new even-aged stand [15]. Regeneration treatments include natural regeneration using self-sown seed or vegetative reproduction, assisted natural regeneration such as scarification, and artificial regeneration by seeding and planting. Associated site treatments can include site preparation through prescribed burning and thinning [15].
The main research question investigated here is whether the cumulative impacts of logging, together with natural disturbances, have, at a landscape scale in the boreal forests of two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Quebec) [10,16,17,18,19], resulted in forest degradation. These provinces have a long history of logging, and specifically timber harvesting with short rotations, with ecological impacts that have been shown to differ from natural disturbance regimes and that translate into a shift from natural landscapes dominated by older forests to managed landscapes dominated by early seral and young pole stands [10,17,20,21].
In the last few decades, this shift has had important consequences for organisms that require older forest habitat conditions, such as the woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) (hereafter, boreal caribou), a once widely distributed but now listed threatened species [22], which is also considered an “umbrella species” [23]. There is a strong scientific consensus, based on a large set of empirical studies, that human-induced disturbances are linked with the global decline of boreal caribou in Canada, e.g., [24,25,26]. Numerous studies have described the effects of human disturbances in the boreal forest and the mechanisms on boreal caribou ecology and demography. Across Canada, these human disturbances include oil and gas development, mining, hydroelectric development, wind farms, and timber harvesting [27,28,29,30,31], as well as seismic lines (e.g., [32,33,34]). In Eastern Canada, boreal caribou populations have been mainly affected by industrial forestry [35,36,37,38] and by the associated development of logging roads, e.g., [39,40,41,42,43,44]. Accordingly, we also examined the consequences of the cumulative impacts of timber harvesting across the two provinces in Eastern Canada on the suitable habitat of the boreal caribou in local population ranges within this large region of the boreal biome.

2. Materials and Methods

Our study area, totalling 67.2 M ha, is defined by those forests within the boreal zone that are public (crown) forests managed for wood production and other uses. In Ontario, the managed forest region is called the Area of Undertaking (consisting of Forest Management Units (FMU)), 28.6M ha of which occurs within the boreal zone. In Quebec, the managed forest area (MFA) is 38.6 M ha, consisting of public lands south of the northern forest limit that was defined by a biophysical approach [45]. We overlaid the ranges of 21 boreal caribou local populations that fell within or overlapped the study area, and we retrieved GIS shapefiles for them from provincial sources [46,47]. Each local population range corresponds to the 99% minimum convex polygon that was estimated from all GPS radio-collared female individuals of a given population followed throughout a year and over several years for each population (Figure 1).
The analytical workflow used in this study is illustrated in Figure 2. First, we delineated the forest area using a modelled land cover characterization spatial data layer for Canada at a 30-m pixel resolution [48,49]. The land cover layer for 2019 was used, selecting only forested pixels (mixed wood, broadleaf, and coniferous). We masked the forest cover layer to the study region and calculated the managed public forest area values. We then compiled data on the forest management history, including the year of logging and forest age, from (i) the two provincial forest management inventory databases where the data are georeferenced to polygons within local forest management units (FMU) and (ii) the national modelled datasets on logging history and forest age (Figure 2). These data were processed using the terra package [50] in R [51] and QGIS [52].
In Ontario, forest management data for each FMU are provided in the Ontario Forest Resource Inventory (FRI). A total of 31 Ontario FMUs overlapped with the study area. All publicly accessible Forest Management Units’ data packages were retrieved from the FRI Inventory Packaged Products Version 2 [53]. The years for which data were available varied by FMU, and three FMUs had no data publicly available (Table S1). We identified and extracted productive forest polygons and harvested forest polygons from each FMU, with harvest polygons identified by the “harvest” depletion type (“DEPTYPE”) and productive forest identified by “forest” polygon type. We calculated the area of managed productive forest from the extracted forest polygon data. For FMUs with missing data, values were pulled from published reports (Table S1). The harvest polygons were reprojected to Canada Atlas Lambert (EPSG:3978) and rasterized at a 30-m pixel resolution to complement the other rasterized layers used. Raster pixels were assigned a value representing the year of harvest via the “YRDEP” attribute.
For Quebec, we calculated the total managed forest area using “Unité d’aménagement” polygons [54]. We extracted harvested areas from the Quebec southern ecoforest inventory data [55], which are also publicly available in the form of polygonized forest units, spanning from the beginning of the 20th century to 2020. The “origine” attribute was used to extract harvested polygons where the code indicated that harvesting (i.e., logging) had occurred, with partial harvests excluded from the analysis (Table S2). As per Ontario, these polygons were reprojected and then rasterized.
To fill gaps in the harvest records, we added a national Landsat-derived forest harvest layer [56]. This modelled dataset is publicly accessible at a 30-m spatial resolution for all of Canada, showing harvests between 1985 and 2020. We masked these data by the study area and then merged them with the Ontario and Quebec harvest layers. In areas of overlapping pixels, the modelled dataset year was applied as it provided the most recent logging data.
We extracted data on plantations—which are artificially regenerated stands that have been converted from naturally regenerating forests—and forests undergoing assisted regeneration (via seeding and planting) within the study area from the forest inventory datasets and provincial landcover databases. In the Ontario FRI, any forest polygons with development stage (“DEVSTAGE”) codes indicating that the forest was planted or seeded were extracted (“newplant”, “newseed”, “ftgplant”, “ftgseed”). This was complemented by plantation pixels extracted from the Ontario Land Cover Compilation (OLCC) dataset [57], at a 15-m resolution, resampled to 30-m to complement the national forest cover data. From the Quebec forest inventory, we used the “origine” attribute, with specific plantation-related codes identified and extracted (Table S2). The polygonal forest resource datasets were reprojected to EPSG:3978 and rasterized at a 30-m pixel resolution, and all identified plantation and assisted regeneration areas were merged into a single layer. We calculated the total area of plantations and forests undergoing assisted regeneration from this layer for each province. Planted pixels were also considered to be harvest pixels for the calculation of the total harvest area.
We also extracted disturbance information to produce a more comprehensive disturbance layer for analysis. For Ontario, we used information from the OLCC and from the FRI. Pixels categorized as disturbed from the OLCC included impacts from mining, infrastructure, agriculture, and undifferentiated rural. Mining in the boreal forest is open-pit mining, where the habitat is destroyed and linear infrastructures are created for the transportation of minerals. Although these land disturbances are spatially limited when compared with industrial logging, which covers entire regional areas, they may locally be stressful for caribou and are human disturbances that result in the reduction of habitat quality when they occur within local population ranges.
We also extracted and rasterized from the FRI any polygons with a polygon type of unclassified as per previous layers. For Quebec, we extracted disturbance pixels from the Utilisation du territoire dataset, which classifies land cover in Quebec at a 10-m pixel resolution [58]. Any areas classified as “Agricole, Anthropique, Coupes et régénérations” or “Non classifié” were extracted and resampled to 30 m.
We quantified older forests (≥100 years old) from the provincial forest inventory datasets and supplemented them with modelled data. For Ontario, we extracted and rasterized forest polygons with an origin year (“OYRORG”) of 1920 or earlier (after being updated to account for recent depletion events). For Quebec, we identified forests ≥100 years through the “cl_age” variable in the Carte écoforestière à jour database [59], with polygons categorized as “VIN”, “VIR” and all categories with forest age classes ≥100 years. To address spatial and temporal gaps in the FRI, we also included modelled forest age data at a 30-m pixel resolution from Maltman et al. [60]. We selected and added to the old forest layer forest pixels with an estimated age of ≥100 years. We further cleaned the layer through the removal of known logged and disturbed areas from the provincial dataset from the older forest layer.
We conducted a Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA) [61] (hereafter, “patch analysis”) on the primary forest layer using the GuidosToolbox [62] to delineate the core forest from edges and other non-core pixels. The edge width was set to 30 m (one pixel) as a conservative estimate of the edge effect on forest habitat. From the subset of pixels identified as “core” forest, contiguous pixels were grouped into patches (including diagonally contiguous), and the number and area of these patches were calculated.
We mapped boreal caribou suitable habitat within the 21 ranges of local populations in three steps. First, we extracted treed wetland and coniferous forest from the national land cover map for 2019 and masked the population ranges that overlapped with the study area. We selected treed wetland and coniferous forest as they most closely aligned to the selected boreal caribou biophysical habitat attributes listed in the National Scientific Assessment of Critical Habitat for Boreal Caribou [22], which states that they generally select upland and lowland mature and old undisturbed coniferous forests or peatlands, while avoiding shrub-rich habitats, deciduous forests, and anthropogenically disturbed areas. The spatial habitat requirements of boreal caribou are large tracts of mature and old undisturbed coniferous forest that facilitate their antipredator spacing-out strategy [63].
When timber harvesting operations increase in boreal caribou populations’ range, areas of clearcuts lead to the fragmentation of the caribou’s suitable habitat, while the proliferation of early seral habitats increases the abundance of other cervids, particularly moose (Alces americanus), given the accessible and palatable vegetation in clearcuts [64]. This higher abundance of ungulates triggers a numerical response of wolves (Canis lupus) that increases the predation pressure on caribou [65,66]. In addition, black bears (Ursus americanus), which also benefit from the palatable vegetation in clearcuts, become incidental predators of caribou calves [67]. The predation risk on boreal caribou is exacerbated by the expansion of logging roads that facilitate predator movement [44,68], predator–prey encounters [69] that directly impact caribou calves [39], and adult caribou survival [41]. Hence, caribou mortality increases in proximity to cutblocks and logging roads, both for calves and adults [70].
Second, we assembled a disturbance layer for land within the boreal caribou local population ranges that intersected the study area, sourced from national and provincial datasets [22,71]. The disturbances included contemporary harvest (since 1980) buffered by 500 m; the combined provincial disturbance layer (powerlines, railways, seismic lines, pipelines dams, airstrips, mines, reservoirs, settlements, well sites, agriculture, and oil and gas) buffered by 500 m [57,58]; roads buffered by 500 m, sourced from [59,72,73]; and fires since 1980, sourced from [74]. All disturbances and buffer distances used in our analysis were previously determined by the Scientific Report on Critical Habitat Assessment of the Boreal Caribou [22]. We rasterized vector datasets as per earlier layers, and all caribou disturbances were merged into a single raster layer. Insect infestations were not included as a disturbance factor in our analysis.
Third, within each of the 21 boreal caribou local population ranges, we calculated the percentage of the area with critical caribou habitat and the percentage of the area that was disturbed. Using Environment Canada methods [22], we assessed the level of risk that each local population of boreal caribou is exposed to in each critical habitat region based on proportional disturbance thresholds for the level of risk to stable or positive population growth: ≤10% disturbance is very low risk; >10 ≤ 35% is low risk; >35 ≤ 45% is moderate risk; >45 ≤ 75% is high risk; and >75% is very high risk, with >35% disturbance being unsuitable for supporting stable caribou populations. We also conducted a patch analysis on the critical caribou habitat to generate patch statistics.

3. Results

The cumulative area of recently logged forest (from ~1976 to 2020) was 14,024,619 ha, with 8,210,617 ha in Quebec and 5,814,002 ha in Ontario (Table 1, Figure 3 and Figure 4). The annual area logged peaked in the year 2000 at 462,097 ha, with a sharp decline in 2008 coincidental with the global financial crisis (Figure 4). While there was a reduction in the rate of cumulative area logged from 2008, the cumulative area continued to increase monotonically.
The total area of older forests (≥100 years old) was 21,249,341 ha, with 11,840,474 ha in Quebec and 9,408,867 ha in Ontario (Table 1; Figure 5). Of this, the patch analysis assigned 8,359,381 ha as core area (Table 2). The patch count statistics (Table 3) revealed that there were 1,085,822 core older forest patches <0.25 ha and an additional 603,052 < 1.0 ha. There were 52 > 1000–50,000 ha and 8 > 50,000 ha (Figure 5).
The core critical caribou habitat in the 21 local population ranges totalled 6,103,534 ha (Table 2; Figure 6), distributed among ~387,102 patches with 362,933 < 10 ha and 14 > 50,000 ha (Table 3). The median percentage of local population ranges that was disturbed was 53.5%, with Charlevoix having the maximum (90.3%) and Basse Côte-Nord the least (34.9%) (Table 4, Figure 6). Ranges with ≤35% of the area disturbed are recognized as at the maximum level of disturbance that will support range self-sustaining populations [22]. For the 21 boreal caribou ranges examined, 4 were at very high risk, 15 at high risk, and 2 at low risk (Table 4).

4. Discussion

Our main findings (Table 1, Figure 3) reveal a total recently logged area of ~14 M ha that constitutes around 28% of the study area. We use the term “recently logged since ~1976” as the results are limited by the available data sources, and this is an estimate of when reliable provincial forest management information systems and FMU record keeping were implemented. However, it is well established that Eastern Canada has a long history of logging, throughout much of the 19th century [75]. Eastern Quebec, for example, experienced selective logging during the 19th century, with intensification of logging during the first half of the 20th century as clearcutting, plantations, and salvage logging following wildlife or insect outbreaks [76] ramped up only after 1975 [18]. Consequently, it cannot be assumed that forests with no record of recent logging after approximately the early 1900s have never been logged and therefore would meet the formal definition of primary forest [77]. Further analysis revealed that the forests for which there is no record of recent logging (since ~1976) contain a range of age classes, including ~21.2 M ha of older forests. Most of the remaining older forests are found at the northern boundary of the study area, with smaller areas in the south reflecting the long legacy of logging combined with natural disturbances (Figure 7).
The annual amount of recently logged forests increased dramatically from 1972 until 2008 (Figure 4) and then dropped, coinciding with the global financial crisis, which heralded a steep decline in demand for wood resources [78]. While annual logging rates remain well below the pre-2008 peak, what is critical from an environmental and biodiversity perspective is the impacts from the ongoing and growing cumulative harvested area [79,80,81] (Figure 6).
The cumulative impact from the ~14 M ha of recently logged forest differs from the complexities of the natural disturbance regimes and resulting forest succession pathways observed in Canadian boreal forests [13]. Previous studies in Quebec have found that the landscape-level extent of older forests has decreased in boreal forests managed for industrial wood production, resulting in a loss of stand age diversity, particularly older forests, to the expanse of early-successional and young forest stands, which become more abundant than they were under historical natural disturbance regimes [16,82,83,84]. Indeed, [82] and [85] have shown that logging has significantly increased the rate of disturbances in this region. This decrease in older forests when compared with historical natural conditions is accompanied by the resulting decline in structural attributes—such as large live and dead standing trees and coarse woody debris associated with older forests—which negatively affects biodiversity [19,20,86]. Recently logged stands are more vulnerable than older stands to eastern spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana Clem.) and windthrow [87].
While the total area of older forests (~21.2 M ha) is substantial (Table 1), it occurs as a vast scatter of patches embedded within a highly anthropically disturbed forest landscape structure in terms of both species composition and spatial configuration (Table 2 and Table 3, Figure 6) [88,89,90]. There are thus only eight remaining patches ≥50,000 ha, which is the area threshold for defining Intact Forest Landscapes (IFL) [89]. IFL are important in Canadian boreal forest for the conservation of biodiversity, ecological processes, and other ecosystem services [88]. The largest of these IFL are found at the northern border of the managed forest estate and are contiguous with the extensive unmanaged forest landscapes that lay beyond to the north.

4.1. Caribou Habitat

We identified core suitable caribou habitat in the 21 local population ranges found within the managed forest estate of our study area. Only two ranges had disturbance levels ≤35%, the recognized maximum level of disturbance that will likely support, with a 60% probability, range self-sustaining populations (Table 4). The remaining 19 ranges were assessed at high to very high risk and therefore require a “restoration” rather than “conservation” management response [22].
The predominance of the cumulative impact of logging on the loss and degradation of suitable caribou habitat is now well established [90,91,92]. In an inter-population chronosequence model, Environment Canada [22] has shown that nearly 70% of the variation in caribou recruitment across twenty-four study areas spanning the full range of boreal caribou distribution and range condition in Canada was explained by a single composite measure of the total disturbance comprising buffered anthropogenic and fire disturbances. Most of the variation in caribou recruitment could be attributed to the negative effects of anthropogenic disturbance, which includes logging as well as logging roads and other linear infrastructures such as seismic lines, which are mostly prevalent in the Prairie provinces of Western Canada [22]. This disturbance–recruitment relationship was also detected for single population responses as a function of cumulative range disturbances over time [42]. Both direct and indirect impacts arise, including on caribou behaviour, an increased predator–prey encounter risk [69], the higher efficiency of predator movement in timber harvested landscapes due to the considerable development of logging road networks [44], and the resulting effects on caribou vital rates and demographic trends. Moreover, the landscape configuration resulting from intensive logging forces caribou to use small remnants of suitable habitat (i.e., undisturbed mature and older forest) that are intermingled with more risky habitats (including cutblocks and logging roads) [79].

4.2. Forest Degradation

The definition of forest and deforestation is well established in international agreements [77], albeit not without controversy [93]. However, the definition of forest degradation remains the focus of ongoing discussion and more attention is now being paid to it in policy (e.g., European Union regulation prohibiting the import of certain commodities and products associated with deforestation and forest degradation [94]). The conversion of naturally regenerating forest to plantations or planted forest constitutes habitat conversion and therefore results in a loss of biodiversity and a reduction in key ecosystem services [95]. Forest regeneration in harvested stands in the FMU data for Quebec reported a substantial area (20%) of harvested forest with assisted regeneration through tree plantations, totalling ~8.2 M ha. The Ontario province’s forest management practices include artificial regeneration (direct seeding, planting), with planting considered suitable for a wide range of sites, and it is often the regeneration option chosen for productive and competitive sites [96].
In analyzing national contributions to the 2020 Global Forest Resources Assessment, the FAO found that countries defined degraded forest based on a range of factors, including the presence of forest disturbances (logging, wildfire); changes in forest structure (including decreases in forest canopy); the loss of productivity; the loss of biodiversity; soil damage/erosion; reductions in the provision of ecosystem goods and services; negative effects on other land uses (e.g., by causing a loss of downstream water quality); and the loss of carbon, biomass, and growing stock [97]. Our results therefore reveal two major categories of forest degradation in the managed forest estate of Ontario and Quebec, which have accrued due to the cumulative ecological impacts of logging: (1) there has been a loss of stand age diversity, particularly older forests, to the expanse of early-successional and young forest stands; and (2) the loss and degradation of critical caribou habitat and an increase in the risks to self-sustaining boreal caribou populations.
The Canadian Government claims that its forests have been managed according to the principles of sustainable forest management for many years [98], yet this notion of sustainability is tied mainly to maximizing wood production and ensuring the regeneration of commercially desirable tree species following logging [99]. From this perspective, the commercial logging of natural forests does not constitute either deforestation or degradation, so long as the forest remains dominated by naturally regenerating, commercially valued tree species and the wood supply is sustained (e.g., the sustained yield forestry concept). The managed boreal forests of the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec have, on this basis, largely avoided deforestation. However, substantial areas of managed boreal forests are now dominated by early-successional and regenerating stands with less extant older forests and are now out of range of their historical natural proportions [21,82].
A greater emphasis is now needed on the protection and restoration of older forests [5,20]. As noted by [79], the remaining large older forest tracks need to be set aside conjointly as caribou habitat must be restored within the ranges of local populations. In FMUs where logging continues, alternatives to short-rotation clearcutting are needed [10,17,19,83,100,101] in order to increase the prevalence of larger, older forest patches.

5. Conclusions

The cumulative impact of logging in the managed forest estate of Ontario and Quebec has resulted in the truncation of the landscape-level diversity of stand ages, particularly with regard to older forests, by solely using even-aged management harvesting with clearcuts. This has degraded the boreal forest environment and increased the prevalence of at-risk boreal caribou populations. Major changes are needed to boreal forest management in Ontario and Quebec for it to be ecologically sustainable for caribou populations but also for other elements of biodiversity associated with older forests and their attributes.

Supplementary Materials

The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/land13010006/s1. Table S1: Availability of Ontario FRI data for all FMUs in the study region; Table S2: Quebec southern ecoforest inventory data codes for the ORIGINE attribute, with designations assigned for this study.

Author Contributions

B.M.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing—Original Draft, Visualization, Supervision, Project Administration; C.C.: Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal Analysis, Writing—Original Draft, Visualization; P.N.: Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal Analysis, Writing—Original Draft, Visualization; S.H.: Software, Formal Analysis, Data Curation, Visualization; D.A.D.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validating, Writing—Review and Editing, Supervision; J.R.M.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing—Review and Editing; M.D.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing—Review and Editing; P.D.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing—Review and Editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was support by a grant from the Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., New York, NY, USA.

Data Availability Statement

The primary data used in these analyses were sourced from the cited publicly available digital data portals. The derived spatial data layers are available on request to the authors. The source code used in the analysis can be found in a publicly available GitHub repository (https://github.com/patrick-m-norman/Boreal-forest-case-study (accessed on 12 December 2023)).

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Figure 1. Location of the study area in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and the boreal caribou local population ranges.
Figure 1. Location of the study area in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and the boreal caribou local population ranges.
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Figure 2. The analytical workflow used in the study. The two main analysis stages are shown on the left-hand side of the figure, a description of each step in the workflow is given in the centre, and the computer program or programming language used is given on the right.
Figure 2. The analytical workflow used in the study. The two main analysis stages are shown on the left-hand side of the figure, a description of each step in the workflow is given in the centre, and the computer program or programming language used is given on the right.
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Figure 3. Overview of logged forest within the study area from provincial FRI data for the period ~1976 to 2020.
Figure 3. Overview of logged forest within the study area from provincial FRI data for the period ~1976 to 2020.
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Figure 4. Area of recently logged forest ~1976 to 2020. The national modelled data were used to fill gaps in the provincial forest resource inventory data commenced in 1985.
Figure 4. Area of recently logged forest ~1976 to 2020. The national modelled data were used to fill gaps in the provincial forest resource inventory data commenced in 1985.
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Figure 5. The distribution of older forests (≥100 years old) within the study area, coloured by patch size category.
Figure 5. The distribution of older forests (≥100 years old) within the study area, coloured by patch size category.
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Figure 6. The distribution of core caribou habitat patches within the 21 critical habitat population ranges, coloured by patch size category.
Figure 6. The distribution of core caribou habitat patches within the 21 critical habitat population ranges, coloured by patch size category.
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Figure 7. Distribution of stand age in forests within the study area for which there was no record of logging since ~1976 (A) and the latitudinal distribution of older forest (≥100 years old) in the study area (B). Numbers above each bar represent the percentage area of forest within each age category outside areas for which there is a record of logging.
Figure 7. Distribution of stand age in forests within the study area for which there was no record of logging since ~1976 (A) and the latitudinal distribution of older forest (≥100 years old) in the study area (B). Numbers above each bar represent the percentage area of forest within each age category outside areas for which there is a record of logging.
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Table 1. Aggregate forest statistics for study area. Category percentages show the fraction of natural forest land cover.
Table 1. Aggregate forest statistics for study area. Category percentages show the fraction of natural forest land cover.
CategoryForest Area ha
QuebecOntarioTotal
a.
Natural forest land cover
27,587,50822,479,50850,067,016
b.
Recently logged (since ~1976)
8,210,617
(30%)		5,814,002
(26%)		14,024,619
(28%)
c.
Older forests (≥100 years old)
11,840,474
(43%)		9,408,867
(42%)		21,249,341
(42%)
Table 2. Total area in each patch statistics category for older forests (≥100 years old) and for boreal caribou habitat in the caribou critical habitat ranges. Class definitions are derived from the Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA) (patch analysis). Core areas are defined as interior forests, edge areas represent forest edges, perforations are interior forest edges, branches are edge forests connected to a forest patch at one end, bridges are forest corridors connected to the core at both ends, islets are patches too small to contain a core, and loops are edges connected to the same core habitat.
Table 2. Total area in each patch statistics category for older forests (≥100 years old) and for boreal caribou habitat in the caribou critical habitat ranges. Class definitions are derived from the Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA) (patch analysis). Core areas are defined as interior forests, edge areas represent forest edges, perforations are interior forest edges, branches are edge forests connected to a forest patch at one end, bridges are forest corridors connected to the core at both ends, islets are patches too small to contain a core, and loops are edges connected to the same core habitat.
ClassOlder Forests (≥100 Years) (ha)Critical Caribou Habitat in Local Population Ranges (ha)
Core8,359,3816,103,534
Edge3,423,7061,190,911
Perforation424,040532,055
Branch2,348,692395,647
Bridge3,477,735369,369
Islet2,538,021182,047
Loop680,345249,439
Table 3. Counts of core patch sizes by size class for older forests and for critical caribou habitat in the 21 local population ranges.
Table 3. Counts of core patch sizes by size class for older forests and for critical caribou habitat in the 21 local population ranges.
Patch Size (ha)Patch Count
Older Forests (≥100 yrs)Critical Caribou Habitat in Local Population Ranges
0–0.251,085,822176,818
0.25–0.5360,18963,465
0.5–1242,86343,315
1–2156,39333,776
2–369,13915,377
3–440,4439176
4–526,7056188
5–1062,69514,818
10–2544,43511,888
25–5016,8925113
50–10085483095
100–25047012125
250–5001452869
500–1000664505
1000–10,000542505
10,000–50,0005255
50,000–250,000712
250,000–500,00012
Table 4. Area of critical caribou habitat within the 21 local population ranges, the proportion of each range that is disturbed, and the assessed level of risk.
Table 4. Area of critical caribou habitat within the 21 local population ranges, the proportion of each range that is disturbed, and the assessed level of risk.
PopulationLocal Population Range Area (ha)Critical Boreal Caribou Habitat Area (ha)% Local Population Range DisturbedLevel of RiskPrevious Boreal Caribou Assessment (Source: Environment Canada (2011))
Assinica5,109,938850,28372.6HighNA
Basse Côte-Nord3,490,6651,663,84834.9LowNA
Berens1,612,106369,89546.4HighRNSS/RSS, as likely as not
Brightsand1,525,297241,06765.6HighRNSS/RSS, as likely as not
Caniapiscau540,674262,59634.9LowNA
Charlevoix777,73860,54890.3Very HighRNSS, very unlikely
Churchill2,035,815427,94849.0HighRSS, likely
Coastal162,874753145.3HighRSS, likely
Detour1,977,443676,31350.9HighNA
Gaspésie425,46042,93887.5Very HighNA
Kesagami3,373,2041,042,71653.5HighRNSS, very unlikely
Manicougan2,742,1411,062,41247.2HighRSS, likely
Manouane2,716,465812,29658.1HighRNSS/RSS, as likely as not
Nipigon2,928,933 243,92674.4HighRSS, likely
Notaway2,371,806877,77946.3HighNA
Outardes2,775,318983,49250.7HighNA
Pagwachuan2,165,77340806067.8HighRSS, likely
Pipmuacan1,911,249279,54675.2Very HighRNSS, unlikely
      
Sydney578,90269,52850.0HighRNSS, unlikely
Témicamie6,465,4161,336,04867.8HighNA
Val d’Or385,38154,87675.8Very HighRNSS, unlikely
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Mackey, B.; Campbell, C.; Norman, P.; Hugh, S.; DellaSala, D.A.; Malcolm, J.R.; Desrochers, M.; Drapeau, P. Assessing the Cumulative Impacts of Forest Management on Forest Age Structure Development and Woodland Caribou Habitat in Boreal Landscapes: A Case Study from Two Canadian Provinces. Land 2024, 13, 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13010006

AMA Style

Mackey B, Campbell C, Norman P, Hugh S, DellaSala DA, Malcolm JR, Desrochers M, Drapeau P. Assessing the Cumulative Impacts of Forest Management on Forest Age Structure Development and Woodland Caribou Habitat in Boreal Landscapes: A Case Study from Two Canadian Provinces. Land. 2024; 13(1):6. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13010006

Chicago/Turabian Style

Mackey, Brendan, Carly Campbell, Patrick Norman, Sonia Hugh, Dominick A. DellaSala, Jay R. Malcolm, Mélanie Desrochers, and Pierre Drapeau. 2024. "Assessing the Cumulative Impacts of Forest Management on Forest Age Structure Development and Woodland Caribou Habitat in Boreal Landscapes: A Case Study from Two Canadian Provinces" Land 13, no. 1: 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13010006

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