The Boreal Forest Transect Case Study: Global Change Effects on Ecosystem Processes and Carbon Dynamics in Boreal Canada

Abstract

The Boreal Forest Transect Case Study (BFTCS) is a multi-disciplinary ecological study organised around a 1000 km transect located in central Canada. The transect is oriented along an ecoclimatic gradient in a region likely to undergo significant environmental change within the next few decades, and crosses the climate-sensitive boreal forest biome, including the transitions north and south into tundra and grassland respectively. Originally conceived as an extension to the BOReal Ecosystem Atmosphere Study (BOREAS), the 10-year BFTCS project projects the intensive canopy-scale measurements and modelling advances obtained from BOREAS to a wider range of sites with a longer-term ‘perspective. In addition to considering ecophysiological processes with time-frames of the order of one year or shorter, BFTCS addresses the effects of larger scale, longer term processes including vegetation succession and ecosystem disturbances. The BFTCS currently provides practical linkages among ecosystem monitoring, field experiments and regional scale modelling. It will ultimately provide a knowledge-base of key processes and their environmental sensitivities, and assessments of possible climate feedbacks, which can be used to assess the possible consequences of global change both regionally and globally.