Have some landscapes in the eastern Canadian boreal forest moved beyond their natural range of variability?

Background: In the contxt of ecosystem management, the present study aims to compare the natural and the present-day forested landscapes of a large territory in Quebec(Canada). Using contemporary and long-term fire cycles, each natural forst landscape is defined according to the variability of its structure and composition, and compared to the present-day landscape. This analysis was conducted to address the question of whether human activities have moved these ecosystems outside the range of natural landscape variability.Methods: The study encompassed a forested area of 175 000 km2 divided into 14 landscapes. Using a framework that integrates fire cycles, age structure and forest dynamics, we characterized the forest composition and age structures that resulted from three historical fire cycles(110,140, and 180 years) representative of the boreal forest of eastern Canada. The modeled natural landscapes were compared with present-day landscapes in regard to the proportion of old-growth forests(landscape level) and the proportion of late-successional forest stands(landscape level and potential vegetation type).Results: Four landscapes(39%) remain within their natural range of variability. In contrast, nine landscapes(54%)show a large gap between natural and present-day landscapes. These nine are located in the southern portion of the study area, and are mainly associated with Abies-Betula vegetation where human activities have contributed to a strong increase in the proportion of Populus tremuloides stands(early-successional stages) and a decrease of oldgrowth forest stands(more than 100 years old). A single landscape(7%), substantially changed from its potential natural state, is a candidate for adaptive-based management.Conclusion: Comparison of corresponding natural(reference conditions) and present-day landscapes showed that ten landscapes reflecting an important shift in forest composition and age structure could be considered beyond the range of their natural variability. The description of a landscape's natural variability at the scale of several millennia can be considered a moving benchmark that can be re-evaluated in the context of climate change.Focusing on regional landscape characteristics and long-term natural variability of vegetation and forest age structure represents a step forward in methodology for defining reference conditions and following shifts in landscape over time.

The Natural Oscillation of Two Types of ENSO Events Based on Analyses of CMIP5 Model Control Runs

The eastern-and central-Pacific El Ni（n）o-Southem Oscillation （EP-and CP-ENSO） have been found to be dominant in the tropical Pacific Ocean,and are characterized by interannual and decadal oscillation,respectively.In the present study,we defined the EP-and CP-ENSO modes by singular value decomposition （SVD） between SST and sea level pressure （SLP） anomalous fields.We evaluated the natural features of these two types of ENSO modes as simulated by the pre-industrial control runs of 20 models involved in phase five of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project （CMIP5）.The results suggested that all the models show good skill in simulating the SST and SLP anomaly dipolar structures for the EP-ENSO mode,but only 12 exhibit good performance in simulating the tripolar CP-ENSO modes.Wavelet analysis suggested that the ensemble principal components in these 12 models exhibit an interannual and multi-decadal oscillation related to the EP-and CP-ENSO,respectively.Since there are no changes in external forcing in the pre-industrial control runs,such a result implies that the decadal oscillation of CP-ENSO is possibly a result of natural climate variability rather than external forcing.

Determination of uncertainties of geomechanical parameters of metamorphic rocks using petrographic analyses

Geomechanical parameters of intact metamorphic rocks determined from laboratory testing remain highly uncertain because of the great intrinsic variability associated with the degrees of metamorphism.The aim of this paper is to develop a proper methodology to analyze the uncertainties of geomechanical characteristics by focusing on three domains,i.e.data treatment process,schistosity angle,and mineralogy.First,the variabilities of the geomechanical laboratory data of Westwood Mine(Quebec,Canada)were examined statistically by applying different data treatment techniques,through which the most suitable outlier methods were selected for each parameter using multiple decision-making criteria and engineering judgment.Results indicated that some methods exhibited better performance in identifying the possible outliers,although several others were unsuccessful because of their limitation in large sample size.The well-known boxplot method might not be the best outlier method for most geomechanical parameters because its calculated confidence range was not acceptable according to engineering judgment.However,several approaches,including adjusted boxplot,2MADe,and 2SD,worked very well in the detection of true outliers.Also,the statistical tests indicate that the best-fitting probability distribution function for geomechanical intact parameters might not be the normal distribution,unlike what is assumed in most geomechanical studies.Moreover,the negative effects of schistosity angle on the uniaxial compressive strength(UCS)variabilities were reduced by excluding the samples within a specific angle range where the UCS data present the highest variation.Finally,a petrographic analysis was conducted to assess the associated uncertainties such that a logical link was found between the dispersion and the variabilities of hard and soft minerals.

Effect of insoluble materials on the volumetric behavior of rock salt

This paper focuses on the presence of nodules of insoluble materials within salt specimens,and their effect on the volumetric strain measurements and the dilatancy phenomenon.We analyzed experimental results of over 120 conventional triaxial compression tests,and found that in 20%of the cases,the volumetric strain measurements were atypical.We also noted that the natural variability of the specimens can lead to a non-negligible data scattering in the volumetric strain measurements when different specimens are subjected to the same test.This is expected given the small magnitude of those strains,but it occasionally implies that the corresponding specimens are not representative of the volumetric behavior of the studied rock.In order to understand these results,we numerically investigated salt specimens modeled as halite matrices with inclusions of impurities.Simulations of triaxial compression tests on these structures proved that such heterogeneities can induce dilatancy,and their presence can lead to the appearance of tensile zones which is physically translated into a micro-cracking activity.The modeling approach is validated as the patterns displayed in the numerical results are identical to that in the laboratory.It was then employed to explain the observed irregularities in experimental results.We studied the natural variability effect as well and proposed a methodology to overcome the issue of specimen representativity from both deviatoric and volumetric perspectives.

2021:A Year of Unprecedented Climate Extremes in Eastern Asia,North America,and Europe

The year 2021 was recorded as the 6th warmest since 1880.In addition to large-scale warming,2021 will be remembered for its unprecedented climate extremes.Here,a review of selected high-impact climate extremes in 2021,with a focus on China,along with an extension to extreme events in North America and Europe is presented.Nine extreme events that occurred in 2021 in China are highlighted,including a rapid transition from cold to warm extremes and sandstorms in spring,consecutive drought in South China and severe thunderstorms in eastern China in the first half of the year,extremely heavy rainfall over Henan Province and Hubei Province during summer,as well as heatwaves,persistent heavy rainfall,and a cold surge during fall.Potential links of extremes in China to four global-scale climate extremes and the underlying physical mechanisms are discussed here,providing insights to understand climate extremes from a global perspective.This serves as a reference for climate event attribution,process understanding,and high-resolution modeling of extreme events.

Could CMIP6 climate models reproduce the early-2000s global warming slowdown?

The unexpected global warming slowdown during 1998–2013 challenges the existing scientific understanding of global temperature change mechanisms,and thus the simulation and prediction ability of state-of-the-art climate models since most models participating in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project(CMIP5)cannot simulate it.Here,we examine whether the new-generation climate models in CMIP6 can reproduce the recent global warming slowdown,and further evaluate their capacities for simulating key-scale natural variabilities which are the most likely causes of the slowdown.The results show that although the CMIP6 models present some encouraging improvements when compared with CMIP5,most of them still fail to reproduce the warming slowdown.They considerably overestimate the warming rate observed in 1998–2013,exhibiting an obvious warming acceleration rather than the observed deceleration.This is probably associated with their deficiencies in simulating the distinct temperature change signals from the human-induced long-term warming trend and/or the three crucial natural variabilities at interannual,interdecadal,and multidecadal scales.In contrast,the 4 models that can successfully reproduce the slowdown show relatively high skills in simulating the long-term warming trend and the three keyscale natural variabilities.Our work may provide important insight for the simulation and prediction of near-term climate changes.