Boreas

Boreal Ecosystem- Atmosphere Study

Project Summary – TF-10

BOREAS was a joint project in climate change sponsored principally by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the USA and several Canadian agencies, including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Forestry Canada, and the Atmospheric Environment Service (AES).  The study took place in a northern boreal forest in order to examine climate-ecosystem interaction at a large scale and improve our understanding of how Boreal forests interact with the atmosphere, how much CO₂ they can store, and how climate change will affect them.

Location of the study sites in Canada

The Queen's-Trent team (PI's Harry McCaughey and Dennis Jelinski, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, plus Peter Lafleur and Jim Buttle, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario) was designated as Tower Flux Group 10, hence TF-10.  The focus of the work was energy and carbon balance modeling in the northern boreal forest.  The project examined the temporal character and biophysical controls of the fluxes of energy and carbon at a fen wetland and an upland young jack pine forest site near Thompson, Manitoba, in the BOREAS Northern Study Area (NSA).  There was a companion Southern Study Area (SSA), located in the southern ecotone of the boreal in Saskatchewan. The field component of the research is concluded and full data sets from our sites for 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1996, accompanied by explanatory documentation, can be found in the BOREAS Information System (BORIS) which can be accessed via the BOREAS web page.  A number of graduate students from Queen's and Trent conducted thesis research as part of BOREAS, including Paul Bartlett, David Joiner, and Robert Metcalfe at the doctoral level, and Andy Costello, Blair Mantha, and Greg Bryant at the masters level.

NSA

SSA

The flux sites are identified as follows:  old jack pine (OJP), old black spruce (OBS) old aspen (OA), young jack pine (YJP), and fen wetland (Fen).