Assessing Morphological Change in Canadian Boreal Forests

Abstract

Boreal forest cover change occurs in Canada primarily due to fire, a process that is predicted to experience a regime modification due to a changing climate. While fire frequency and area burned are relatively easily measured and tracked, we seek to understand whether the morphological structure of fires has also been changing through time or whether differences are detectable among Canadian Provinces and Territories due to jurisdictional or geographic differences. We use jurisdictions as proxies for differing forest management policies and geographic position. This study compares morphological segmentation patterns of annual boreal forest cover change from 2001 to 2014 across the entire Canadian boreal biome. We implement a bootstrapping of join-count results that were computed for each morphological element type and use the means and variability within ANOVA and Levene’s tests for assessing statistically significant differences among our groups (years and jurisdictions). Overall, the morphology of forest disturbance patterns within the Canadian boreal biome was not found to be trending in any specific way, though there were isolated differences detected. We highlight those specific combinations that are particularly interesting within the context of the research questions posed. Our approach is conservative, as to not produce an alarmist response; since we focus on means, and disturbances are likely to emphasize extremes, thus only substantial regime modifications will produce statistically significant results. Interestingly, even with projected increases to fire intensity and area burned, the morphological structure of fire remains relatively stable.