The Canadian Forest Service is researching climate change to determine possible changes to the forest landscape.

The world's a scene of changes; and to be Constant, in Nature were inconstancy; For ‘twere to break the laws herself has made.

Abraham Cowley
English poet

Reporting on scales of this magnitude requires partnerships between federal, provincial and territorial governments as well as universities and industry throughout this country and world-wide.

In some ways, the relationship between global warming and the forest is a matter of degrees: degrees in terms of temperature; degrees in terms of latitude; degrees in terms of magnitude.  An increase of a few degrees in Earth's temperature could cause, for example, forest pests, diseases and fires at higher latitudes, resulting in varying degrees of consequences.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change addresses global warming at an international level in an attempt to ensure a sustainable future. With sustainability as part of its mandate, the Canadian Forest Service is investigating forest response to climate change in partnership with other federal governmental departments, provincial and territorial governments, industry, academia, and other nongovernmental organizations across Canada and throughout the world.

As steward to one-tenth of the world's forests, Canada has a vested interest in the sustainability of its forests.  Besides studying how climate change might cause an increase in forest disturbances, the Canadian Forest Service is also researching possible changes to the forest landscape in terms of ecosystem functioning, range of tree species, and forest structure and composition.  Such global warming research is headed by the Climate Change Network at the Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre.

Although playing an essential part in all climate change research undertaken by the Canadian Forest Service, the Pacific Forestry Centre is particularly focussed on developing a carbon accounting framework for the country. Since carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas, estimating the size of carbon exchanges between the atmosphere and the forest is central to climate change research.  Whether forest carbon stocks are increasing – a carbon sink, or decreasing – a carbon source, fluctuates over time.  The Canadian Forest Service has been tracking carbon stocks and fluxes in forest ecosystems since the 1980s through the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector, a computer simulation which incorporates observed inventory data and numerically modeled processes.  Carbon accounting information is vital not only to address the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol if it is ratified, but for reporting land use changes and carbon credit trading between provinces or internationally, should Canada pursue that option. 

"Current climate change research is in part a response to the international need for forest observations on global, regional and local levels," says Evelynne Wrangler, Director of Forest Information at the Pacific Forestry Centre. "But reporting on scales of this magnitude requires partnerships between federal, provincial and territorial governments as well as universities and industry throughout this country and world-wide."

The climate change initiatives detailed on the following pages demonstrate some of the current work underway at the Pacific Forestry Centre to ensure that Canada's forests remain sustainable.

Special issue on Climate Change and Forest Carbon Accounting in Canada.