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，也是我们过去发展的强大纽带。然而，现代工业的优势之一是广泛采用森林认证，这为买家确保以可持续的方式管理森林。过去，人们把重点放在单个林地的情况上，但随着整体管理的改善，越来越多的人关注景观水平。虽然已对几种动物物种的未砍伐森林的影响、排列和数量进行了研究，但对于大多数植物物种来说，很少考虑这一点，因为它们通常不被认为是北方森林中的扩散限制。然而，许多苔藓(苔藓和地钱)物种的扩散可能是有限的，特别是那些具有特定特征的物种，例如不经常繁殖的物种。该项目旨在通过研究景观特征对苔藓植物群落组成、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，我们将能够制定森林景观中栖息地质量、数量和组织的最低阈值。通过行业和政府合作伙伴的参与，这些门槛可纳入森林管理，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.