Boreal forest where is it located

Massive hydroelectric development has produced changes in stream-flow patterns, flooded large areas to result in a dramatically altered landscape and cause the production of methyl-mercury. Acid rain also continues to be a serious problem for the lakes and shallow soils of the boreal region despite legislation curbing acid precipitation-producing emissions in both the US and Canada.

Furthermore, organochlorine and heavy metal contamination especially mercury and cadmium continue to be a source of concern. Threats to the Boreal Regions With these facts at hand, is the situation in the Boreal regions alarming? All in all there are problems, many of which could be ignored since the Boreal regions aren't yet popular to fret over. Remember, at these extreme polar latitudes the forests, once cut down, take much longer to regenerate than forests that are logged in tropical regions of the planet.

Large reserves able to maintain their ecological integrity must be adequately set aside and thorough environmental assessments must be carried out before governments decide to allow any sort of large-scale industrial activity. The boreal forest's role in global climate control Locked up in the Boreal forests are vast amounts of carbon, and their biomass is so huge and so vital that when they are in their maximum growth phase during the northern spring and summer, the worldwide levels of carbon dioxide fall and the worldwide levels of oxygen rise.

The Boreal Forests are just as important to the global ecosystem as the Tropical Forests and they should be given equal attention by all concerned with forestry and the environment.

Global environmental changes, and the social, economic, and political processes of globalization that help drive the concerns, are now influencing local forest conditions and management practices.

At the same time political changes and alliances are facilitating the evolution of novel institutions and the interplay between institutions from different governmental levels. Some of these are clearly aimed at facilitating further exploitation of forest resources and promoting economic development, whereas others are aimed more at controlling or mitigating some of the environmental and social impacts of these transformations.

At the international level a number of environmental regimes, like the Kyoto Protocol and the Convention on Biological Diversity, are evolving in ways that could potentially have a major influence on forest land development strategies of nations.

At more local levels, decentralization is facilitating what is in some a cases, a return to more community-based rather than state-centered forms of forest management. However, scientific understanding of the boreal forest's significance in the carbon cycle and its role in control of greenhouse gases and impact on global climate change is incomplete.

Fig 2 Canadian Boreal Forest Map. Its goal is to improve our understanding of the boreal forests -- how they interact with the atmosphere, how much CO 2 they can store, and how climate change will affect them.

BOREAS wants to learn to use satellite data to monitor the forests, and to improve computer simulation and weather models so scientists can anticipate the effects of global change. Surface flux data were collected throughout the growing season from the towers and other techniques. Over research flights remote sensing and airborne eddy correlation were flown in support of the operation.

A surprising picture of the energy, water and carbon dynamics of the boreal ecosystem is emerging, even at this early stage in the experiment. In simple terms, the lowland forests of the boreal ecosystem in Saskatchewan and Manitoba grow on flat terrain, with a mineral soil base overlain by a very thin layer of live and decomposed moss. In short, the boreal lowland soils behave hydrologically much like a gently rolling semi-impermeable floor, with a thin layer of cotton on top.

In terms of the water and energy balance, we have seen that the boreal ecosystem often behaves like an arid landscape, particularly early in the growing season. This is because even though the moss layer is wet for most of the summer, the poor soils and harsh climatic conditions lead to low photosynthetic rates, which in turn lead to low evapotranspiration rates. Much of the precipitation simply penetrates through the moss and sand to the underlying semi-impermeable layer and runs off.

As a result, much of the available surface energy is dissipated as sensible heat which often leads to the development of a deep m and turbulent atmospheric boundary layer. These insights into the partitioning of the surface energy should have a significant impact on the development of climate and weather models, most of which currently characterize the boreal landscape as a freely evaporating surface.

If this finding holds up under further analysis, it would imply that root zone moisture, a difficult variable to quantify over large spatial scales, does not exert significant control on the surface energy balance. Rather, the important variables controlling photosynthesis and evaporation appear to be soil temperature in the spring, and atmospheric relative humidity and air temperature in the summer and fall. This new understanding of controls on regional evaporation rates is relevant to the issue of whether the boreal ecosystem is a sink or source of carbon, but until the analysis is further along this question will remain unresolved.

We have learned that sequestration of carbon by conifers, the largest component of the boreal ecosystem, is limited in the spring by frozen or cold soils, and in the summer by hot temperatures and dry air. In the fall, the conifers were observed to have the largest carbon uptake of the season; presumably as soils are warm, the air temperatures are not so hot, and the air is not so dry.

Leaf-level measurements suggest that the end of the growing season may be induced by frost. Measurements show that at temperatures below about -5 to degrees C, black spruce needles do not recover, and photosynthesis stops. To summarize, the photosynthetic machinery of the boreal forest has considerably less capacity than the temperate forests to the south.

This is reflected in low photosynthetic and carbon drawdown rates which are associated with low transpiration rates. The coniferous vegetation in particular follows a very conservative water use strategy. The vegetation transpiration stream is drastically reduced by stomatal closure when the foliage is exposed to dry air, even if soil moisture is freely available. The low evapotranspiration rates coupled with a high available energy during the growing season the albedos are among the lowest observed over vegetated regions can lead to high sensible heat fluxes and the development of deep planetary boundary layers, particularly during the spring and early summer.

These planetary boundary layers are often characterized by intense mechanical and sensible heat-driven turbulence. As far as we know, all current climate and numerical weather prediction models grossly overestimate evapotranspiration from the region. Return to Top of Page. They are broken down as follows: Boreal Forests Other Forests. Country Russia Brazil Canada U. China Indonesia Zaire Nordic countries All other. Total forest area millions of ha.

Percentage of global forested area 22 16 7 6 4 3 3 2 During its relatively brief history since deglaciation, the boreal forest has experienced many fluctuations of its climatic environment.

The current warming trend experienced by northern latitudes is, however, unprecedented in its speed and projected amplitude, and is also more pronounced than in the rest of the world. Resulting impacts are numerous and include the melting of permafrost, changes in tree growth rates, increased incidences of wildland fire, and changes in the dynamics of insect outbreaks. The causal links among these changes and their implications for the functioning of the boreal forest and the services it provides to local and global populations are not yet completely understood.

About Boreal Forests. Although the boreal region itself is ancient, the boreal forest:. The boreal forest needs natural disturbances such as forest fires and outbreaks of insects and disease. These disturbances:. Learn more about natural disturbances in our forests. Forest companies have to replant or seed all the areas they harvest on public land, including in the boreal forest, or allow the forest to grow back.

Learn more about the ways Canada values and protects our boreal forest. You will not receive a reply. For enquiries, contact us.