Fire History of Appalachian Forests of the Lower St-Lawrence Region (Southern Quebec)

Serge Payette,Vanessa Pilon,Jason Laflamme,Pierre-Luc Couillard

doi:10.3390/f8040120

Serge Payette, Vanessa Pilon + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/f8040120

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Abstract

Sugar maple (Acer saccharum) forests are among the main forest types of eastern North America. Sugar maple stands growing on Appalachian soils of the Lower St-Lawrence region are located at the northeastern limit of the northern hardwood forest zone. Given the biogeographical position of these forests at the edge of the boreal biome, we aimed to reconstruct the fire history and document the occurrence of temperate and boreal trees in sugar maple sites during the Holocene based on soil macrocharcoal analysis. Despite having experienced a different number of fire events, the fire history of the maple sites was broadly similar, with two main periods of fire activity, i.e., early- to mid-Holocene and late-Holocene. A long fire-free interval of at least 3500 years separated the two periods from the mid-Holocene to 2000 years ago. The maple sites differ with respect to fire frequency and synchronicity of the last millennia. According to the botanical composition of charcoal, forest vegetation remained relatively homogenous during the Holocene, except recently. Conifer and broadleaf species coexisted in mixed forests during the Holocene, in phase with fire events promoting the regeneration of boreal and temperate tree assemblages including balsam fir (Abies balsamea) and sugar maple.

Highlights

Deciduous and mixed forests of the temperate zone of eastern North America are ecosystems rarely impacted by fire [1]
Northern sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.) forests were considered ecosystems maintained at equilibrium [12] under the regime of canopy-gap dynamics [13,14,15]
The rise and dominance of sugar maple communities deduced from pollen data have been associated with reduced fire activities, during the mid-Holocene [24,25,26,27]

Summary

Introduction

Deciduous and mixed forests of the temperate zone of eastern North America are ecosystems rarely impacted by fire [1]. Northern sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.) forests were considered ecosystems maintained at equilibrium [12] under the regime of canopy-gap dynamics [13,14,15]. Field evidence suggests that sugar maple is adapted to various sun-and-shade regeneration environments [16] associated with logging [17,18,19], abandoned fields [20], and fire [21,22,23]. The rise and dominance of sugar maple communities deduced from pollen data have been associated with reduced fire activities, during the mid-Holocene [24,25,26,27]. Realistic on biogeographical grounds, the fire/sugar maple connection during the Holocene as reported from pollen and microcharcoal data remains to be tested with direct evidence from botanically-identified macrofossil data including macrocharcoal. Given that macrocharcoal of sugar maple and other hardwood species as well as conifer species can be identified at the genus if not the species level, Forests 2017, 8, 120; doi:10.3390/f8040120 www.mdpi.com/journal/forests

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