A spatial analysis of the relationship between forest demographic dynamics and diversity under climate change
Abstract
Forest dynamics arise from three demographic processes simultaneously, namely recruitment,
mortality and growth, all of which are expected to accelerate for the boreal forest under future
climate change. Tree species diversity, however, is hypothesized to mitigate the impacts of
climate change on the rates of these demographic processes. At the same time, understanding the
generation and maintenance of tree species diversity is a historical challenge and requires
examining multiple demographic dynamics simultaneously. The purpose of this dissertation is to
investigate the complex relationship between tree demographics and diversity under the
influence of climate change through spatial analysis of 173 permanent sample plots in the boreal
forest of Manitoba, Canada, at the individual-tree level. A mapped dataset of individual stems
that were repeatedly measured from 1986 to 2010 forms the basis of three studies. [...]