Determining critical thresholds of landscape disturbance in coniferous and mixed boreal forests in western Québec

林业是加拿大经济的基本支柱之一，是我们过去发展的一个强有力的联系。然而，现代工业的优势之一是森林认证的广泛采用，这确保了买方以可持续的方式管理森林。过去，人们非常关注单个林分中发生的事情，但随着整体管理的改善，人们越来越关注景观层面。虽然未采伐森林的影响安排和数量已经检查了几个动物物种，它一直很少考虑大多数植物物种，因为它们通常不被认为是在北方森林的扩散限制。然而，许多苔藓（苔藓和地钱）物种是潜在的扩散有限，特别是那些具有特定特征，例如不频繁繁殖。该项目旨在通过研究景观特征对brathte群落组成、物种扩散和遗传多样性的影响来填补这一知识空白。有了这些结果，我们将能够制定栖息地质量，数量和组织在整个森林景观的最低阈值。通过行业和政府伙伴的参与，这些门槛可以纳入森林管理，促进森林认证和加拿大森林产品在国际市场上的品牌实力。

The forestry industry is one of the fundamental pillars of the Canadian economy, and is a strong link to our past development. However, one of the strengths of the modern industry is the wide adoption of forest certification, which ensures for the buyers that the forests are managed in a sustainable manner. In the past there was a strong focus on what was going on in an individual forest stand, but as management overall improves, there is an increasing focus on the landscape level. While the effect arrangement and amount of unharvested forest has been examined for several animal species, it has been little considered for most plant species as they are generally not considered as dispersal limited in the boreal forest. However, many bryophyte (moss and liverwort) species are potentially dispersal limited, particularly those with specific characterisitcs, for example infrequent reproduction. This project aims to fill this knowledge gap by examining the influence of landscape characteristics on bryophyte community composition, species dispersal and genetic diversity. With these results, we will be able to develop minimum threshold values of habitat quality, amount and organisation across a forest landscape. Via the participation of industry and governmental partners, these thresholds can be integrated into forest management, facilitating forest certification and Canadian forest products brand strength on the international markets.