Sustainability of Canada’s forestry sector may be compromised by impending climate change

Abstract

Climate change poses a serious risk to long-term sustainable forest management, particularly when projecting future wood supply for forestry operations. However, few studies have accounted for the cumulative and interacting impacts of climate change on forest productivity and natural disturbances; even fewer have considered drought impacts when projecting wood supply. We modeled how disturbance- and drought-induced tree mortality will affect wood supply in three regions of Canada’s boreal forest over a 200-year period under three climate-forcing scenarios. We project strong declines in overall aboveground biomass due to increases in mortality caused mainly by increased drought and wildfire, particularly in drier, western regions. Using two management strategies, we show that maintaining current long-term sustainable harvesting levels will be extremely challenging depending on the level of anthropogenic climate forcing. Increased wildfire activity under severe climate forcing will strongly decrease the availability of harvestable stands. In western areas that are already water-limited, harvesting levels will need to be low to remain sustainable. Our results show that Canada’s future wood supply and sustainable forest management practices are highly vulnerable to changes in climate; hence adaptation actions are needed to lower these vulnerabilities.