Following the appointment of the new Cabinet, the Forest Sector now reports to the ministère des Ressources naturelles et des Forêts, while the Wildlife and Parks Sectors report to the ministère de l'Environnement, de la Lutte aux changements climatiques, de la Faune et des Parcs. Adjustments will be made to the website over time.

Dead wood provides habitat for springtails across a latitudinal gradient of forests in Quebec, Canada

Published in Forest Ecology and Management 472: 118237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2020.118237

Understanding the importance of dead wood-associated biodiversity and related ecological functions has become increasingly important in forest ecosystem management. Yet, studies on dead wood diversity frequently focus on conspicuous organisms such as birds or saproxylic beetles, and are rarely deployed across significant climatic gradients. Here, we investigated the potential role of deadwood as a habitat for springtails, an understudied group of invertebrates generally associated with soils, and tested how these communities were influenced by climate. Black spruce logs were placed in 13 natural forest sites which were distributed among 3 latitudinal zones (southern, central and northern Quebec, Canada). We compared the springtail communities that colonized the logs through different metrics: abundance, richness and species composition. Our results indicated that dead wood was used as a habitat by 74 springtail species. A clear latitudinal diversity gradient was observed, with southern communities being on average two times richer and over 13 times more abundant than the northern ones per log. Moreover, distinct community compositions were observed in the three zones. Overall, our results suggest that (1) dead wood retention could be beneficial for small invertebrates such as springtails and (2) such biodiversity conservation measures would be more efficient if done systematically along large geographic gradients encompassing different biomes, particularly in the context of climate change.

Forêt ouverte User Guide

This user guide introduces the different features of the Forêt ouverte interactive map, including how to use the map themes, add layers to customize a map, use the measure and draw tools, import a personal layer, export a customized map and download data.

A Guide to Surface Deposit and Borrow Pit Identification Using LiDAR

This user guide facilitates the identification of surficial deposits and borrow pits using LiDAR data and aerial photographs. The high accuracy of LiDAR data is particularly useful for observing geomorphological details that are difficult to see using other data sources (e.g., aerial photographs only). The shaded relief digital terrain model produced from LiDAR data removes the masking effect of vegetation, exposing the underlying terrain and thus allowing an easier and more precise identification of surficial deposits. Using this guide to identify more easily and more precisely surficial deposits can undoubtedly facilitate preliminary analyses and field work, as well as the search for material favourable to civil engineering work and the construction of roads.

User’s Guide: Products derived from LiDAR Data

This user’s guide presents how to view or modify LiDAR derived products in both ArcGIS and QGIS. Basic and advanced features are shown, for example changing a symbology, combining a hillshade and transparent DTM, creating a new hillshade or slope model, assembling or clipping rasters, creating contour lines, reclassifying a raster, converting a raster to vector format and creating a focal CHM or a topographic wetness index.