Wildfire and industrial development have altered vast areas of Canada’s boreal region and can threaten the biodiversity, livelihoods and cultural values forests support (Wells et al. 2020, Gauthier et al. 2023). Intensive forestry can reduce the natural variability of forests on local and landscape scales—essential features needed to support biodiversity. With the goal of minimizing these negative ecological consequences, practitioners across Canada have adopted retention forestry, whereby harvesting patterns mimic the spatial patterns of natural disturbance such as wildfire (Andison 2003). Areas burned by wildfire contain remnant patches of unburned forest, called fire skips. These skips are thought to buffer the initial effects of fire through microclimatic amelioration and add variation in structure to the recovering forest (Perera and Buse 2014).

Understory plant communities comprise the majority of floristic diversity in the boreal forest. Plants support other biological processes, and provide cultural and aesthetic value to local communities (Hart and Chen 2006, Pohjanmies et al. 2017). Despite the importance of plant diversity, increasingly severe wildfires and the widespread adoption of retention forestry, few published studies have considered understory plant diversity in fire skips (Fig 1.) or their analogs in clear cuts, retention patches (Fig 2.). We hope to help fill this knowledge gap on fire skips and provide evidence to inform forestry practices in order to ensure the presence of desired values in our future forests.

My research will build on previous work examining plant communities in harvest retention patches (Bradbury 2004, Lachance et al. 2013, Franklin et al. 2018, Larsen et al. 2019) by sampling in conifer-dominated forest ten years post-disturbance and with greater resolution to detect edge effects. By examining the full assemblage of understory vascular plants along with microclimate and forest structure, my study will add new contributions to the literature comparing boreal fire skips and harvest retention patches (DeLong and Kessler 2000, Dragotescu and Kneeshaw 2012, Moussaoui et al. 2016, Odell et al. 2023).

Our study aims to answer the following questions:

1. 1. What elements of forest structure microclimate in the post-disturbance landscape?

1. 2. Are microclimates of forest remnants similar to larger tracts of forest

1. 3. How do plant communities respond to microclimatic variation?

   4. Does disturbance type change the answer to questions 1-3?