Our Next Speaker
560th Meeting
10 December 2023
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
1. Minutes of the 2022 Annual General Meeting.
2. Report of the Treasurer.
3. Report of the Nominating Committee and Election
of Officers.
4. Other business.
5. Adjournment.
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Jennifer Baltzer
FROM RESILIENCE TO REGENERATION FAILURE: IS BLACK
SPRUCE AT A TIPPING POINT IN BOREAL NORTH AMERICA?
Intensifying wildfire activity and climate change
can drive rapid forest compositional shifts. In
boreal North America, black spruce shapes forest
flammability and depends on fire for regeneration.
This relationship has helped black spruce maintain
its dominance through much of the Holocene.
However, with climate change and more frequent and
severe fires, shifts away from black spruce
dominance have been demonstrated, with
implications for ecosystem function. Forest
resilience to disturbance is supported by multiple
mechanisms, including ecological legacies
affecting seed availability, species’
environmental tolerances, and biotic interactions.
Understanding the relative importance of these
mechanisms supports predictions of where and how
disturbance will alter future forest resilience.
In 2014, 2.85M ha of forest burned in the
Northwest Territories, Canada, the largest fire
season in its recorded history. To evaluate the
impacts of this “megafire” year, observational and
experimental studies have been combined to test
mechanisms underlying black spruce resilience to
increasing wildfire activity. These results
demonstrate the vulnerability of black spruce to
effects of increased fire activity that erode
ecological legacies relating to seed availability
and seedbed conditions. Generalities in these
patterns and drivers were evaluated by
synthesizing post-fire regeneration data from
across boreal North America. Despite considerable
remaining resilience in black spruce forests,
these results suggest that increases in climate
moisture deficits and fire activity will undermine
this resilience, pushing boreal forests toward a
tipping point that has not been crossed in several
thousand years.
Jennifer Baltzer grew up in
rural Nova Scotia and obtained a BSc degree at
Acadia University. She was awarded a PhD by the
University of Toronto for work in the Borneo
jungle evaluating resource limitation in tropical
trees. Following a post-doctoral fellowship at
Harvard University, her first faculty position was
at Mount Allison University. In 2011, she moved to
Wilfrid Laurier University where she currently
holds a Canada Research Chair in Forests and
Global Change. Her research focuses on the impacts
of global warming, including permafrost thaw,
wildfire regimes and biome shifts, on the
distribution and function of high latitude boreal
forests and their implications for northern
communities. Dr Baltzer works closely with the
Government of NWT and collaborates with NASA and
the Smithsonian Institution.
The meeting will be held at the
Army Officers’ Mess, 149 Somerset St. W (between
Elgin and Cartier streets), Ottawa. Parking is
available in the Mess’s lot (Elgin Street side)
and on the street. The meeting begins at 2000 hrs
and the bar will be available from 1930 hrs. As
always, guests are welcome.
Next meetings:
Feb 14 Barry Pottle: Towards a
contemporary urban Inuit art photography
Mar 14 David Murray on the
establishment of Northern national parks
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Thomas Frisch
Secretary
613-725-2221; tfrisch@sympatico.ca
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SPEAKERS
PROGRAMME
2022-2023
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October 11 Doreen
Larsen Riedel
Writer,
Researcher
"The 'Horse Sailors' of the Northwest
Passage"
November
8 Rob Cooke
Mid-
and Long-Distance
Dog Musher
"Following Your
Dreams: Dog Mushing in Canada's
North"
December
13 Scott Cocker
PhD
Candidate,
Graduate
Teaching
Assistantship,
Faculty of
Science - Earth
&
Atmospheric
Sciences,
University of
Alberta
"100,000 Years
of Northern Small Mammals from
Yukon Territory"
January
10 AGM and
speaker Jennifer Baltzer
Associate Professor, Biology, Wilfrid
Laurier
University,
Canada
Research Chair
(CRC) in
Forests and
Global Change
"Loss of
Ecological Resilience in
Canada’s Boreal Forest in
the Face of Wildfire:
Implications for Ecosystem
Function"
February
14
Barry
Pottle
Artist,
Urban Inuk
Photographer
from
Nunatsiavut,
Labrador,
currently
based in
Ottawa
"Towards
A Contemporary Urban
Inuit Art Photography"
March 14 David
Murray
Parks Canada (Ret'd)
"Parks
Canada in the Arctic: 50
years"
April
11 Tamara
Tarasoff
Parks
Canada (Ret'd)
"Ellesmere
to the Erebus in 25
years: How the Nunavut
Agreement Changed
Everything"
April
27 Annual
Banquet with
guest-of-honour, Antoni
Lewkowicz
Emeritus
Professor,
University of
Ottawa
"Having a
Melt-Down: Long-Term
Permafrost Change in the
Arctic and Sub-Arctic"
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