Holocene ecohydrological dynamics and related carbon balance in the oligotrophic peatlands of north-central Québec, Canada

在魁北克中北部地区，泥炭地容易受到近期气候变化的影响，也容易受到工业发展活动的影响。该区泥炭地主要发育于前寒武纪地盾的地形坳陷中。它们的特征是表面图案类似于在拉布拉多西部、瑞典中部和芬兰北部观察到的。在加拿大东部，这些生态系统显示出最近的生态水文不平衡，表现为普遍的地下水位上升。在魁北克这个采矿活动正在发展的地区，在2016年夏天与工业合作伙伴Stornoway Diamonds Corporation （Mine Renard）合作成功启动NSERC Engage项目和Mitacs加速项目之前，从未对泥炭地进行过详细研究。初步结果表明，泥炭地确实呈现出与格兰德河流域东北段相似的生态水文不平衡模式，并证实了从水文和未来温室气体（主要是二氧化碳和甲烷）平衡的角度调查其对自然和人为压力的脆弱性的重要性。该项目旨在量化可能影响这些北方生态系统生态水文不平衡现象的水文气候变化。为此，将利用花粉、植物宏观化石和地下水位重建进行定量古气候重建，以支持泥炭地水动力学（包括地下水交换）的建模，以确定影响过去数千年来加拿大东北部现象的最敏感参数。Stornoway Diamonds Corporation和Nemaska Lithium的工业合作伙伴都支持这一倡议，认为这是魁北克政府要求的湿地补偿措施。转移给工业界的预期结果之一将是在北部领土正在进行的开发的背景下为脆弱的泥炭地系统制定生物完整性指数。

In the central-north Quebec region, peatlands are vulnerable to recent climate change but also to industrial development activities. Peatlands in this region are mainly represented by systems that developed in topographic depressions of the Precambrian Shield. They are characterized with surface patterning similar to that observed in western Labrador, central Sweden and northern Finland. In eastern Canada, those ecosystems have shown recent ecohydrologic disequilibrium expressed by a general water table rise. In this region of Quebec where mining activities are in development, peatlands had never been studied in detail before a successful NSERC Engage project and a Mitacs Acceleration project were initiated during summer 2016 in collaboration with the industrial partner Stornoway Diamonds Corporation (Mine Renard). Preliminary results show that the peatlands do present a similar pattern of ecohydrological disequilibrium to those documented in the northeast section of the La Grande River watershed and confirm the importance of investigating their vulnerability to natural and anthropogenic pressures in terms of hydrology but also in terms of future greenhouse gas (mainly carbon dioxyde and methane) balance. The proposed project aims at quantifying the hydroclimatic changes that may have influenced the ecohydrologic disequilibrium phenomenon in these northern ecosystems. To do so, quantitative paleoclimate reconstruction using pollen, plant macrofossils and water table reconstructions will be developed to support modeling peatlands water dynamics (including groundwater exchanges) in order to identify the most sensitive parameters that influenced the phenomenon in northeastern Canada over the past millenia. Both Stornoway Diamonds Corporation and Nemaska Lithium industrial partners support this initiative as wetlands compensation measure required from the Quebec government. One of the expected results transferred to the industry will be the development of an index of biological integrity for vulnerable peatland systems in the context of the ongoing development on the northern territory.