An 8500-year history of climate-fire-vegetation interactions in the eastern maritime black spruce–moss bioclimatic domain, Québec, Canada

Abstract

ABSTRACT The eastern, maritime portion of the black spruce – moss bioclimatic domain in Québec (Canada) is characterized by large wildfires with low occurrence. However, it is still poorly understood how climate–fire interactions influenced long-term vegetation dynamics in the boreal forest of eastern Québec. The long-term historical climate–fire–vegetation interactions in this region were investigated using a multiproxy (chironomids, charcoal, and pollen) paleoecological analysis of an 8500-year sediment core. Chironomid-inferred August air temperatures suggest that the warm Holocene Thermal Maximum (HTM; between ca. 7000–4000 cal yr BP) shifted to the cooler Neoglacial period (4000 cal yr BP to present), consistent with other temperature reconstructions across Québec. The shift to spruce-moss forest dominance around 4800 cal yr BP occurred nearly a thousand years before the climatic shift to the Neoglacial period and rather coincided with a shift from frequent low-severity small fires to infrequent but large and severe fire events. Our results suggest that long-term changes in the summer temperature are probably not the main factor controlling fire and vegetation dynamics in eastern Québec. It seems that, throughout the postglacial period, summer temperatures never fell below a threshold that could have induced a significant vegetation response.