This text is part of a special issue of Feminine Leadership
At the base of the boreal forest lies a dense carpet of apple trees of green moss teeming with life. It is this little-known microcosm that the UQAT professor is investigating. last December professor at the Forestry Research Institute of the University of Quebec at Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT) became the first Canadian woman to receive the Spruce Award from the International Association of Bryologists for outstanding contributions to moss biology during the first 25 years of her career.
“Mosses are really very beautiful. Once you start looking at them under the microscope, you discover a different world that was hiding before our eyes,” says Nicole Fenton with a big smile. Including mosses and sedges, bryophytes are non-vascularized plants that form the most primitive group among land plants. They cover bogs and boreal forest undergrowth, climbing logs and rocks in deciduous forests. Above all, they fulfill many ecological roles.
“It’s almost another little forest under the forest,” explains the researcher. They have their own architecture, lots of things grow there, cyanobacteria that fix nitrogen in the air, fungi that decompose them, tails, daphnia (small crustaceans), spiders that eat these invertebrates, slugs, etc. »
Not only do bryophytes host wonderful biodiversity on a microscopic scale, but they also form a buffer zone between the soil and the atmosphere, explains M.me Fenton. They behave in a way like sponges, which allows them to absorb excess rainfall and irrigate the soil for a longer period of time. They also form protective zones to regulate air temperature fluctuations. Finally, it is the small carbon sinks that enable the efficient capture of organic matter.
“It can slow down cycles (for example of carbon) that can become faster and faster with climate change, especially with extreme events such as precipitation or drought,” the researcher believes.
Bridging the knowledge gap
If there are many bryologists in some countries like Sweden, the bryophytes in Canada can be counted on the fingers of both hands, Nicole Fenton calculates. The result: there is a large gap in knowledge about this important group of plants.
“One of the big gaps is that we don’t know their distribution very well,” emphasizes the researcher, who specializes in the ecology of bryophytes. I’m on the COSEWIC (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada) and we can’t know which species are potentially endangered, but we must first identify the limiting factors (to their growth) in order to know the risk factors (to their survival). »
Mme Fenton leads several projects related to bryophyte ecology. For example, they try to understand how disturbance or forest types can change the abundance of certain species in a landscape. Other projects are more applied, he explains, and concern the effects of disturbances, such as forest fires or insect pest epidemics, on bryophytes. The acquired knowledge will enable a better understanding of the functions of bryophytes and their application in forestry.
To date, Nicole Fenton has supervised more than thirty master’s, doctoral, and postdoctoral candidates. She participated in the writing of more than a hundred scientific articles on this topic, as well as several book chapters. For her, awareness remains very important.
“If bryophytes could have one-tenth the visibility of caribou, I’d be happy! the researcher exclaims. We have a huge area of boreal forest that is relatively undisturbed compared to others. I recommend everyone to go out. I wish people would realize that we have this wealth! »
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