The main objective of this research area is to elaborate a transversal and multidisciplinary syntheses from the knowledge accumulated over the past 60 years along the 4000 km latitudinal gradient covered by the Qaujisarvik network of research stations and the SILA network of environmental monitoring stations of the CEN. This transdisciplinary project aims to integrate the results generated by the three other research areas and to enhance longitudinal monitoring by adopting a holistic approach that promotes a global understanding of the functioning of natural systems and environmental risks in a warming context. These two networks, which extend from the boreal forest to the polar desert and which cover a temperature gradient of more than 25°C, provide a worldwide unique laboratory for developing syntheses in order to better anticipate the response of northern landscapes to global warming and to improve the adaptation strategies developed by the Province of Quebec. This research area mobilizes a large number of CEN members around this common goal. Although the results of this research topic are primarily applicable to northern Quebec and eastern Nunavut, they have great potential to lead to major conceptual or practical advances which can be exported to other arctic regions. This research area also offers the possibility of linking with large-scale initiatives such as the Arctic Transects action group within the international initiative Terrestrial Multidisciplinary distributed Observatories for the Study of Arctic Connections (T-MOSAiC).

Project leaders and team: Bêty, Joël; Vincent, Warwick F.; Antoniades, Dermot; Arseneault, Dominique; Berteaux, Dominique; Bhiry, Najat; Boudreau, Stéphane; Comte, Jérôme; Couture, Raoul-Marie; Côté, Steeve; Dominé, Florent; Fortier, Daniel; Gauthier, Gilles; Gravel, Dominique; de Lafontaine, Guillaume; Lajeunesse, Patrick; Langlois, Alexandre; Laurion, Isabelle; Lavoie, Martin; Lecomte, Nicolas; Legagneux, Pierre; Lovejoy, Connie; Lévesque, Esther; Payette, Serge; Pienitz, Reinhard; Rautio, Milla; Roy, Alexandre; Royer, Alain; Simard, Martin; Vézina, François.