Peatland and Forest Vegetation
Understanding threats to peatlands and forests in the Hudson Bay Lowland and adjacent boreal shield.
The Peatland and Forest Vegetation Project is a collaborative project with The University of Guelph, Wilfred Laurier University, Environment and Climate Change Canada, and WCS Canada that aims to understand the status and impacts of potential threats to peatlands and forests in the Hudson Bay Lowland (HBL) and adjacent boreal shield.
Goals
- Establish a consistent survey and sampling protocol to capture the vegetation diversity of the HBL and adjacent boreal shield
- Support efforts by university research partners and Indigenous communities to collect data on the landscape
- Synthesize the data from prior vegetation surveys into one package for interpretation
What we’re doing
- Designing survey and sampling protocols that can be used by anyone interested in studying peatlands in the HBL and beyond
- Collecting vegetation data on the landscape, including tree ring samples for understanding long-term effects of climate change and other disturbances on growth
Why it matters
Protecting peatlands in Canada is critical to meaningful global action on climate change and biodiversity.
- The Hudson Bay Lowland is the second largest peatland complex in the world and a globally important carbon store, but it is targeted for increased expansion of roads and mining, primarily in the proposed Ring of Fire mining area.
- Vegetation communities and changes in species composition and cover through time are understudied in the HBL. The impacts of climate change and increased resource development and associated infrastructure on peatland vegetation and carbon cycling in the HBL are largely unknown.
- Many research groups are collecting data in the HBL with many studies including vegetation surveys. Yet there is no consistent methodology developed to ensure that data collected is comparable to allow for long-term monitoring of peatland vegetation communities.
- Observing what is currently on the landscape is critical for understanding potential future impacts of both climate change and resource development.
