Evelyne Thiffault: Montmorency Forest, a natural barrier against climate change?
As part of the series « Tire-toi une bûche », Professor Evelyne Thiffault presented a lecture on February 19, 2026, on the role of forestry in combating climate change and its potential to help Quebec achieve its climate targets.
According to her, forestry constitutes « an ecological and economic system connected to the rest of the planet », where forest management, wood processing, and utilization are integrated with society’s needs for materials and energy.
Quebec’s Forests: A Carbon Sink with Limited Potential
Quebec’s latest greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory shows that the province’s forests act as a carbon sink, absorbing some of the CO₂ emissions. However, this sink is insufficient to offset all emissions generated by wood products and other managed lands. Furthermore, emissions from forest fires are not included in this inventory, which complicates assessing the true climate role of forestry.
Montmorency Forest: A Living Laboratory for Research
To better understand this dynamic, Evelyne relies on the Montmorency Forest, a unique research site where teams combine fieldwork with computer modeling. These studies track the carbon captured and released by trees, transferred to wood products during harvesting, and emitted at the end of the products’ life. The collected data are used to compare different management scenarios, evaluate their short- and long-term climate effects, and identify concrete strategies for sustainable management of Quebec’s public forests.
Complex Carbon Dynamics and Strategies to Maximize Wood’s Impact
Harvested wood can play a key role in fighting climate change, but its effectiveness largely depends on how it is harvested and used. It can store carbon in buildings and other durable infrastructure, replace highly emissive materials such as steel or concrete, and produce bioenergy, thus helping reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
Studies at the Montmorency Forest reveal that forest carbon dynamics are complex and evolve over time. In the short term, reducing harvest intensity increases carbon stored in trees and soil. But in the long term, overly limited harvesting can reduce wood’s capacity to replace more polluting materials and energy, while shifting demand to other regions of the world that may be less environmentally well-managed.
To maximize wood’s climate effect, Evelyne proposes several complementary and concrete measures: extending the durability of products, promoting recycling, converting post-consumer wood into bioenergy, capturing methane from landfills, and prioritizing sawn wood over pulp and paper production when possible. Together, these actions not only enhance carbon storage but also fully leverage wood’s climate potential within an energy transition and sustainable forest management framework.
A Potential but Conditional Contribution
According to Evelyne, forestry’s role as a solution to climate change is neither automatic nor universal: it depends on a combination of local, regional, and global factors. Forest management and wood processing practices, detailed knowledge of the land and ecosystems, and understanding international wood markets and carbon flows directly influence forestry’s climate effectiveness. While Quebec’s forests represent a carbon sink and hold significant potential to replace more emissive materials and energy sources, their impact remains limited if these practices are not integrated into a comprehensive strategy, including informed decisions on the amount of wood harvested, types of products manufactured, their durability, and the valorization of by-products and waste.
Reflection on how the forestry sector can concretely contribute to Quebec’s climate targets is ongoing. It requires close dialogue among researchers, forest managers, industry, and policymakers, as well as precise understanding of interactions between forests and societal needs. This webinar highlights the importance of applied research and rigorous scientific data to inform political and industrial decisions. It also reminds us that forests, beyond their ecological role, constitute a central strategic lever in Quebec’s climate transition, but their potential must be harnessed thoughtfully, adaptively, and in a coordinated manner.