Victor Danneyrolles

• PhD
• Research Professor at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Context The vegetation composition of northeastern North American forests has significantly changed since pre-settlement times, with a marked reduction in conifer-dominated stands, taxonomic and functional diversity. These changes have been attributed to fire regime shifts, logging, and climate change. Methods In this study, we disentangled the in...

La saison des feux de forêt de 2023 au Québec, marquée par des conditions extrêmement chaudes et sèches, a établi de nouveaux records en brûlant 4,5 millions d'hectares. Cette situation est directement liée aux impacts persistants et en augmentation du changement climatique. Cette étude examine les conditions météorologiques exceptionnelles ayant m...

The 2023 wildfire season in Québec set records due to extreme warm and dry conditions, burning 4.5 million hectares and indicating persistent and escalating impacts associated with climate change. This study reviews the unusual weather conditions that led to the fires, discussing their extensive impacts on the forest sector, fire management, boreal...

Les caractéristiques des forêts préindustrielles permettent d’établir des états de référence pour l'aménagement durable des forêts. Cette approche historique est particulièrement pertinente pour les régions soumises à une forte influence humaine, dans lesquelles les forêts naturelles sont rares. C'est le cas de la région de Rouyn-Noranda, à l'ouest...

The 2023 wildfire season in Québec set records due to extreme warm and dry conditions, burning 4.5 million hectares and indicating persistent and escalating impacts associated with climate change. The study reviews the unusual weather conditions that led to the fires, discussing their extensive impacts on the forest sector, fire management, boreal...

The increasing effects of climate and global change oblige ecosystem-based management to adapt forestry practices to deal with uncertainties. Here we provide an overview to identify the challenges facing the boreal forest under projected future change, including altered natural disturbance regimes, biodiversity loss, increased forest fragmentation,...

Forest anthropogenic and natural stand-replacing disturbances are increasing worldwide due to global change. Many uncertainties regarding the regeneration and growth of these young forests remain within the context of changing climate. In this study, we investigate the effects of climate, tree species composition, and other landscape-scale environm...

Forest anthropogenic and natural stand-replacing disturbances are increasing worldwide due to global change. Many uncertainties regarding the regeneration and growth of these young forests remain within the context of changing climate. In this study, we investigate the effects of climate, tree species composition, and other landscape-scale environm...

Warning This article contains terms, descriptions, and opinions used for historical context that may be culturally sensitive for some readers. Background Understanding drivers of boreal forest dynamics supports adaptation strategies in the context of climate change. Aims We aimed to understand how burn rates varied since the early 1700s in North...

Understanding how burn rates vary over time and space is fundamental to support research on drivers of forest dynamics and elaborate adaptation strategies in the context of climate change. Using 16 fire-history study sites distributed across North American boreal forests, we investigated variation in historical burn rates from 1700–1990. These were...

There is a pressing need for a better understanding of changing forest fire regimes worldwide, especially to separate the relative effects of potential drivers that control burned areas. Here we present a meta-analysis of the impacts of climate fluctuation and Euro-Canadian settlement on burned areas from 1850 to 1990 in a large zone (> 100,000 km2...

Increase in forest disturbance due to land use as well as climate change has led to an expansion of young forests worldwide, which drives global carbon dynamics and timber allocation. This study presents a method that combines a single airborne LiDAR acquisition and time since harvest maps to model height growth of post-logged black spruce-dominate...

With steep climatic gradients over short distances, montane ecosystems provide exceptional opportunities to study ecological responses to climate and other environmental changes. Here we present a summary and synthesis of 10 years of research on this theme in a protected area in southern Québec, Canada (Parc National du Mont Mégantic), with ecologi...

Increase in forest disturbance due to land use as well as climate change has led to an expansion of young forests worldwide, which affects global carbon dynamics and forest management. In this study, we present a novel method that combines a single airborne LiDAR acquisition and historical harvesting maps to model height growth of post-logged black...

Aim Despite global biodiversity losses, trends at local and regional scales are context dependent. Recent studies have been criticized for lacking baselines preceding human impacts, and few such studies have addressed the landscape scale. Our aim was to quantify temporal trends in landscape‐scale tree diversity during an unambiguous period of massi...

Forest fires are a key driver of boreal landscape dynamics and are expected to increase with climate change in the coming decades. A profound understanding of the effects of fire upon boreal forest dynamics is thus critically needed for our ability to manage these ecosystems and conserve their services. In the present study, we investigate the long...

A better understanding of how disturbance impacts tree diversity at different scales is essential for our ability to conserve and manage forest ecosystems in the context of global changes. Here we test the impacts of land use‐related disturbances on tree diversity since the 19th century across a broad region (>150,000 km²) of northern temperate for...

Human activities have changed forest composition of northeastern North America since European settlement by increasing the importance of pioneer shade-intolerant species, at the expense of shade-tolerant and long-lived species. This study used tree taxa lists from land survey archives (1842–1935) to document the pre-settlement forest composition in...

Best 2019 paper in Applied Vegetation Science

Question How has European settlement of Eastern North America modified tree species assemblages? Location The northern temperate forests of the Lower St. Lawrence region (Quebec, Canada). Methods Changes in relative prevalence of tree taxa were reconstructed with early land survey records (1821–1900) and modern forest inventories (1980–2010). For...

Predicting future ecosystem dynamics depends critically on an improved understanding of how disturbances and climate change have driven long-term ecological changes in the past. Here we assembled a dataset of >100,000 tree species lists from the 19th century across a broad region (>130,000km²) in temperate eastern Canada, as well as recent forest i...

L’aménagement écosystémique vise à diminuer les écarts entre forêts aménagées et naturelles, et doit s’appuyer sur des états de référence représentant les caractéristiques des forêts naturelles. Nous proposons d’utiliser la principale source d’information sur la composition de la forêt préindustrielle du sud du Québec, les archives d’arpentage, pou...

ContextKnowledge of how environmental gradients generate changes in community composition across forest landscapes (β-diversity) represents a critical issue in the era of global change, which exerts especially powerful impacts by shifting disturbance regimes. Objectives We analyzed the response of tree communities to increased disturbance rates tha...

Eastern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis L.) has been identified as a target tree species for ecological restoration in northeastern North America. Insight into long-term population dynamics since preindustrial times is key to guiding restoration efforts. In this study, we used a large set of early land survey data to assess the status of eastern wh...

Les changements globaux modifient les écosystèmes forestiers à la fois de manière directe par l'usage des sols et l'exploitation des ressources forestières, et de manière indirecte avec les changements climatiques. La connaissance des dynamiques historiques des paysages forestiers est donc essentielle pour la conservation des écosystèmes et pour mi...

Land use changes that are linked to European settlement of North America have transformed northeastern temperate forest landscapes. Many studies report a regional increase of young early-successional forests due to high disturbance rates since the preindustrial era (fire, land clearing, and clear-cuts). In this study, we document specific compositi...

Questions What were the pre‐industrial forest landscape composition patterns? Which factors had structured the pre‐industrial landscape patterns? How have pre‐industrial landscape patterns and post‐industrial disturbances controlled composition changes? Location An area of 4175 km ² at the temperate–boreal forest interface of southwest Quebec, Can...