Meeting climate change mitigation targets by 2050, as outlined in international pledges, involves determining optimal strategies for forest management, wood supply, the substitution of greenhouse gas-intensive materials and energy sources, and wood product disposal. Our study quantified the cumulative mitigation potential by 2050 of the forest sector in the province of Quebec, Canada, using several alternative strategies and assessed under what circumstances the sector could contribute to the targets. We used the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector to project ecosystems emissions and sequestration of seven alternative and one baseline (business-as-usual [BaU]) forest management scenarios over the 2018-2050 period. Three baskets of wood products were used in a Harvested Wood Products model to predict wood product emissions. The mitigation potential was determined by comparing the cumulative CO(2)e budget of each alternative scenario to the BaU. The proportion of methane emissions from landfills (RCH4%) and the required displacement factor (RDF) to achieve mitigation benefits were assessed both independently and jointly. The fastest and most efficient way to improve mitigation outcomes of the forest sector of Quebec is to reduce end-of-life methane emissions from wood products. By reducing methane emissions, the RDF for achieving mitigation benefits through intensification strategies can be reduced from 1.2-2.3 to 0-0.9 tC/tC, thus reaching the current provincial mean DF threshold (0.9). Both a reduction and an increase in the harvested volume have the potential to provide mitigation benefits with adequate RCH4% and RDF. Increased carbon sequestration in ecosystems, innovations in long-lived wood products, and optimal substitution in markets offer potential avenues for the forest sector to contribute to mitigation benefits but are subject to significant uncertainties. Methane emission reduction at the end of wood product service life is emerging as a valuable approach to enhance mitigation benefits of the forest sector.

The contribution of the forest sector to climate change mitigation needs to rely on optimal strategies that include forest management, wood supply, wood product disposal, and replacement of GHG-intensive materials and energy sources. Our study aimed to assess the impact of alternative forest management practices applied at the stand scale on the capacity of the forest sector to reduce its radiative forcing, using the boreal forests of eastern Canada as a case study. We simulated management of a balsam fir–white birch stand over a sixty-year period and determined the sectorial carbon and radiative forcing budget for a reference scenario (no harvest) and for nineteen clearcut and partial cut alternatives. The results suggest that logging may not significantly reduce carbon emissions compared to a preservation practice and does not yield any climate benefits in terms of radiative forcing. In a context for which the substitution effect of wood products on markets is expected to be limited, the mitigation potential of a scenario is mostly driven by the capacity of the forest ecosystem carbon sink to compensate for the substantial CO2 and CH4 emissions from wood product decay in landfills. The improved assessment of carbon emission temporality, incorporation of ecosystem carbon dynamics, and improved consideration of substitution and the decay of wood products are essential in the development of any forest management strategy. Neglecting these elements can lead to misconceptions and prevent informed mitigation decisions.

Luc Bouthillier (1954-2022) : pionnier de la foresterie sociale québécoise. Un article de la revue Le Naturaliste canadien (Volume 146, numéro 2, automne 2022, p. 2-63) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

The construction industry is a major sector of employment but it has been lagging behind other sectors in terms of productivity for years. Better planning and a heightened presence of technology are advised to reduce the productivity gap. This article aims to combat the haphazard manual process involved in building-erection planning and the associated lag in productivity growth by pointing industry stakeholders to the tools suited for their needs. It may also serve as a basis for further academic research on construction automation, by presenting all the tools found in a uniform and objective structure. To achieve these goals, a systematic literature review of industry-related articles published between January 2008 and 2019 was conducted, leading to the identification of 31 computerized scheduling tools developed specifically for the construction sector. Through this process, trends such as the most widely used software, the countries of origin, the methods of fabrication and the level of automation were identified. The review also resulted in a classification that was later validated via semi-structured interviews with members of the construction industry. Following these interviews, a decision support system was created to facilitate the selection of the tools depending on the planning requirements to address. This will allow project managers to access a wide range of tools and select the ones that best fit their needs. With automated schedule delivery and resource planning, security risks warnings or 4D visualization, project managers can find in those tools an edge that will lead to better working practices and results.

BackgroundForest based climate mitigation emerged as a key component of the Paris Agreement, and thus requires robust science to reduce uncertainties related to such strategies. The aim of this study was to assess and compare the cumulative effects on carbon dynamics of forest management and climate change on boreal and northern temperate forest sector in eastern Canada for the 2020–2100 period.MethodsWe used the spatially explicit forest landscape model LANDIS-II and its extension Forest Carbon Succession, in conjunction with the Carbon Budget Model for Harvested Wood Products framework. We simulated the dynamics of forest composition and carbon flows from forest ecosystems to wood products and their substitution effect on markets under increasing climate forcing, according to a tonne-year approach. Simulations were conducted for a series of forest management scenarios based on realistic practices principally by clearcut in the boreal territory and continuous-cover forestry in the northern temperate one. These scenarios included: i) a business-as-usual scenario (BaU), representing the current management strategy, ii) increased harvesting by 6.3% to 13.9%, iii) increased conservation (i.e. reduced harvesting by 11.1% to 49.8%), iiii) and a scenario representing the natural evolution of the forest landscape (i.e. without any management activity).ResultsOur study revealed that increasing harvesting levels had contrasting effects on the mitigation potential in northern temperate (enhance net sequestration) and boreal forest sector (enhance net emissions) in comparison to the BaU from 2040 onwards, regardless of the future climate. Carbon storage in wood products and the substitution effect were not sufficient to offset carbon emissions from ecosystems. Moreover, climate change had a strong impact on the capacity of both landscapes to act as carbon sinks. Northern temperate landscapes became a net source of carbon over time due to their greater vulnerability to climate change than boreal landscapes.ConclusionsOur study highlights the need to consider the initial landscape characteristics in simulations to maximize the mitigation potential of alternative forest management strategies. The optimal management solution can be very different according to the characteristics of forest ecosystems. This opens the possibility of optimizing management for specific forest stands, with the objective of maximizing the mitigation potential of a given landscape.

Although standards have identified temporary carbon storage as an important element to consider in wood product LCAs, there has been no consensus on a methodology for its accounting. This work aims to improve the accounting of carbon storage and fluxes in long-life wood products in LCA. Biogenic carbon from harvested roundwood logs were tracked using the Carbon Budget Model Framework for Harvested Wood Products (CBMF-HWP). Carbon flows through wood product manufacturing, building life and end-of-life phases, and carbon stocks and fluxes from harvest to the atmosphere were estimated. To cover the products commonly used in the Canadian building industry, a range of softwood products types, provinces and territories and building lifetimes were considered. In addition, policy scenarios were considered in order to model the effects of dynamic parameters through time as a policy target is reached. Most wood products have similar emissions profiles, though cross-laminated timber has higher sawmill emissions and oriented-strand board has higher initial post-demolition emissions. The region of construction is also predictive of the initial post-demolition emissions. Higher recycling rates shift materials from landfills into subsequent product systems, thus avoiding landfill emissions. Landfill decay rates are affected by climate and results in a large range of landfill emissions. The degree of postponement of end-of-life emissions is highly dependent upon the wood product type, region and building lifespan parameters. This work develops biogenic carbon profiles that allows for modelling dynamic cradle-to-grave LCAs of Canadian wood products.

The Province of Quebec is currently in the process of adopting building information modeling (BIM) for major infrastructure projects. However, legal and contractual concerns such as the tendering process, adjudication criteria, intellectual property and risk–reward sharing mechanisms hinder the implementation of an efficient BIM process. This paper addresses the following question: How do norms, whether legislative, regulatory or contractual, functionally or dysfunctionally affect the effective implementation of BIM in Quebec’s public infrastructure framework? This paper suggests that the use of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) should help mitigate legal barriers hindering BIM implementation, while preserving balance between fairness and encouraging collaboration. Quebec’s normative framework, which includes legislation, regulations, contracts and infra-regulatory rules, should be modified to standardize collaborative mechanisms, integrate two-stage negotiated processes such as rank-and-run or best and final offer and enable the assessment of tenderers’ objective qualities and more subjective qualities. Furthermore, a risk–reward sharing mechanism should be implemented through target costing, and upstream participation from a wide range of stakeholders should be encouraged.

A novel approach is proposed to evaluate the impact of forestry on ecosystem quality in life cycle assessment (LCA) combining a naturalness assessment model with a species richness relationship. The approach is applied to a case study evaluating different forest management strategies involving concomitantly silvicultural scenarios (plantation only, careful logging only or the current mix of both) combined with an increasing share of protected area for wood production in a Québec black spruce forest. The naturalness index is useful to compare forest management scenarios and can help evaluate conservation needs considering the type of management foreseen for wood production. The results indicate that it is preferable to intensify forest management over a small proportion of the forest territory while ensuring strict protection over the remaining portion, compared to extensive forest management over most of the forested area. To explore naturalness introduction in LCA, a provisory curve relating the naturalness index (NI) with the potential disappeared fraction of species (PDF) was developed using species richness data from the literature. LCA impact scores in PDF for producing 1 m3 of wood might lead to consistent results with the naturalness index but the uncertainty is high while the window leading to consistent results is narrow.

An accounting system helps to provide information for planning and control of production. This article presents a Life Cycle Costing by using an Activity Based Costing approach of an innovative forestry company. In order to perform a cradle-to-gate assessment the study covers the forest and industrial activities of the forest product processing. The costs of each product in the portfolio are determined by the treatment activities they undergo. The inventory covers several years of activity of the company, which makes it possible to calculate the uncertainty of the average results with Monte Carlo simulation presented in the result section. Based on the results a products portfolio analysis was performed to identify the development progress phases of the mains products to support the product rollover strategy decision.

Wood is increasingly promoted due to its reported low climate change impacts; however, the literature reports provides high variability of climate change impact scores, making comparisons with non-wood materials difficult. The objective of this study is to calculate a database of life cycle inventories (LCI) and dynamic climate change impacts (DCCI) of wood building products, for different use contexts across Canada. Temporally differentiated gate-to-gate LCIs were developed, to which dynamic life cycle assessment (DLCA) was applied, yielding a modular database of cradle-to-grave LCIs and DCCIs of wood products. Four wood product case studies were chosen to demonstrate the use of the modular LCI and DCCI database of wood product use in buildings. The results show that most wood building products provide overall net negative climate change impact scores, though for some wood product specifications results show net positive climate change impacts. Results are sensitive to a few factors, including ecosystem carbon cost (ECC), wood carbon content, building lifespan and end-of-life. This research develops a gate-to-gate LCI and DCCI database for each life cycle stage of wood building products, allowing life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners to calculate DCCI results with respect to a chosen time horizon relevant for decision-making. This modular database would be particularly useful to those practitioners wishing to account for biogenic carbon in wood product life cycle assessment, which is currently quite difficult due to a lack of data. It could also be readily implemented into LCA tools to support building designers in sustainable building material selection.

Research Highlights:This research provides an application of a model assessing the naturalness of the forest ecosystem to demonstrate its capacity to assess either the deterioration or the rehabilitation of the ecosystem through different forest management scenarios.Background and Objectives:The model allows the assessment of the quality of ecosystems at the landscape level based on the condition of the forest and the proportion of different forest management practices to precisely characterize a given strategy. The present work aims to: (1) verify the capacity of the Naturalness Assessment Model to perform bi-directional assessments, allowing not only the evaluation of the deterioration of naturalness characteristics, but also its improvement related to enhanced ecological management or restoration strategies; (2) identify forest management strategies prone to improving ecosystem quality; (3) analyze the model's capacity to summarize the effect of different practices along a single alteration gradient.Materials and Methods:The Naturalness Assessment Model was adapted to theAbies balsamea-Betula papyriferaforest of Quebec (Canada), and a naturalness assessment of two sectors with different historical management strategies was performed. Fictive forest management scenarios were evaluated using different mixes of forestry practices. The sensitivity of the reference data set used for the naturalness assessment has been evaluated by comparing the results using data from old management plans with those based on Quebec's reference state registry.Results:The model makes it possible to identify forest management strategies capable of improving ecosystem quality compared to the current situation. The model's most sensitive variables are regeneration process, dead wood, closed forest and cover type.Conclusions:In theAbies balsamea-Betula papyriferaforest, scenarios with enhanced protection and inclusion of irregular shelterwood cuttings could play an important role in improving ecosystem quality. Conversely, scenarios with short rotation (50 years) could lead to further degradation of the ecosystem quality.

Research Highlights: This research provides an application of a model assessing the naturalness of the forest ecosystem to demonstrate its capacity to assess either the deterioration or the rehabilitation of the ecosystem through different forest management scenarios. Background and Objectives: The model allows the assessment of the quality of ecosystems at the landscape level based on the condition of the forest and the proportion of different forest management practices to precisely characterize a given strategy. The present work aims to: (1) verify the capacity of the Naturalness Assessment Model to perform bi-directional assessments, allowing not only the evaluation of the deterioration of naturalness characteristics, but also its improvement related to enhanced ecological management or restoration strategies; (2) identify forest management strategies prone to improving ecosystem quality; (3) analyze the model’s capacity to summarize the effect of different practices along a single alteration gradient. Materials and Methods: The Naturalness Assessment Model was adapted to the Abies balsamea–Betula papyrifera forest of Quebec (Canada), and a naturalness assessment of two sectors with different historical management strategies was performed. Fictive forest management scenarios were evaluated using different mixes of forestry practices. The sensitivity of the reference data set used for the naturalness assessment has been evaluated by comparing the results using data from old management plans with those based on Quebec’s reference state registry. Results: The model makes it possible to identify forest management strategies capable of improving ecosystem quality compared to the current situation. The model’s most sensitive variables are regeneration process, dead wood, closed forest and cover type. Conclusions: In the Abies balsamea–Betula papyrifera forest, scenarios with enhanced protection and inclusion of irregular shelterwood cuttings could play an important role in improving ecosystem quality. Conversely, scenarios with short rotation (50 years) could lead to further degradation of the ecosystem quality.

This paper aims to combat the haphazard manual process involved in building-erection planning and the associated lag in productivity growth by pointing industry stakeholders to the tools suited for their needs. It identifies 28 computer-assisted building construction scheduling tools that require no special skills and automate at least one step of the scheduling. Resulting from a systematic literature review of industry-related papers published between January 2008 and 2018, this work will guide construction practitioners through an array of tools classified according to their interface, inputs, and outputs, and will serve as the basis for further development in construction automation.

The province of Quebec, Canada, seeks to implement relational alternate project delivery methods to achieve sustainability and energy efficiency in public construction. However, the relational differences between the formal written parts of different delivery methods have yet to be analyzed and understood, as is the case with the relational aspects of contracts and the achievement of sustainable and energy-efficient infrastructure. Using a hermeneutic interpretation of Macneil’s relational contract norms and grounded theory, 26 contracts involving Quebec’s largest public client of vertical infrastructure and representing three different types of project delivery methods (design–bid–build (DBB), design–Build (DB), and construction manager–general contractor/integrated project delivery (CMGC/IPD)) were analyzed using NVivo. It was found that CMGC/IPD is the most relational project delivery method available to Quebec’s public clients, namely because of the public client’s active involvement in the realization process, the increasing complexity of roles, the multitude of common management structures, and the internalization of sustainability measures and conflict resolution. Furthermore, Quebec’s CMGC/IPD was found to be an IPD-ish delivery method, lacking the early involvement of the construction manager and the risk/reward sharing mechanisms necessary to achieve pure IPD status. The findings and theoretical considerations discussed here will help policymakers, contract drafters, and public clients interested in implementing relational contracting practices in public construction projects.

The benefits of aluminum lamination in improving the physical and mechanical properties of wood-based composites is now well documented. This paper shows the contribution of life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool to assess and compare the environmental footprint in the development of laminated panels. SimaPro 9.0 software, using Ecoinvent database was used to analyze the environmental impacts associated with the manufacturing of wood aluminum-laminated (WAL) panels and aluminum honeycomb panel (AHP). The impact 2002+ method was used to estimate environmental impacts. The LCA results show that the WAL panels manufacturing had a lower environmental impact than AHP manufacturing. In term of product, wood-based composites were the best choice as a core in laminated panel manufacturing. Wood-based composite manufacturing showed environmental advantages in all damage categories except in ecosystem quality. Aluminum alloy sheets manufacturing played an important role in the generation of environmental impacts for laminated panel development.

Research Highlights: To inform eco-designers in green building conception, we propose a conceptual model for the assessment of the impact of using wood on the quality of ecosystems. Background and Objectives: The proposed model allows the assessment of the quality of ecosystems at the landscape level based on the condition of the forest and the proportion of different practices to characterize precisely the forest management strategy. The evaluation provides a numerical index, which corresponds to a suitable format to inform decision-making support tools, such as life cycle analysis. Materials and Methods: Based on the concept of naturalness, the methodology considers five naturalness characteristics (landscape context, forest composition, structure, dead wood, and regeneration process) and relies on forest inventory maps and data. An area within the boreal black spruce-feathermoss ecological domain of Quebec (Canada) was used as a case study for the development of the methodology, designed to be easily exportable. Results: In 2012, the test area had a near-natural class (naturalness index NI = 0.717). Simulation of different management strategies over 70 years shows that, considering 17.9% of strict protected areas, the naturalness index would have lost one to two classes of naturalness (out of five classes), depending on the strategy applied for the regeneration (0.206 ≤ ΔNI ≤ 0.413). Without the preservation of the protected areas, the management strategies would have further reduced the naturalness (0.274 ≤ ΔNI ≤ 0.492). Apart from exotic species plantation, the most sensitive variables are the percentage of area in irregular, old, and closed forests at time zero and the percentage of area in closed forests, late successional species groups, and modified wetlands after 70 years. Conclusions: Despite the necessity of further model and parameter validation, the use of the index makes it possible to combine the effects of different forestry management strategies and practices into one alteration gradient.

Province of Quebec (Canada) is in the process of implementing integrated project delivery (IPD) in its procurement process for public infrastructure to more effectively and efficiently achieve functional, environmental, and economic objectives. This paper analyzes the procurement legislation, regulations, and context of three jurisdictions through a comparative law approach and under the light of Macneil's relational contract theory. It is found that Quebec's procurement process has transactional features that should be counterbalanced, in the context of IPD implementation, by focusing on relational values, whether at the macro or personal level. These relational mechanisms should help legislators and public bodies establishing and operationalizing a viable and relational context of professional services and construction works procurement for IPD projects.

Currently, wood and wood construction materials have limitations in how carbon fluxes are accounted for in life cycle assessments. The biogenic carbon balance of wood is often considered to be neutral, meaning that the carbon sequestered by biomass through photosynthesis is considered equal to the carbon feedstock in wood that is eventually released throughout its life cycle. Several publications have recently shown that this assumption could lead to accounting errors. This research work aims to improve the biogenic carbon accounting of the forestry phase of the life cycle of softwood products. This involved specifically modelling carbon fluxes as a function of tree species, growing conditions and forest management practices, from Canadian managed forests. A baseline natural forest scenario was run for 1000 years until the carbon stocks were assumed to reach an approximate steady-state, followed immediately by a harvest scenario that was simulated for another 100 years. The ecosystem carbon costs of the harvest activity were calculated for 117 species and region forest landscapes across Canada and expressed per cubic meter of harvested wood. Most landscapes showed net sequestration after 100 years of harvest history. Exceptions to this included outlier landscapes characterized by low average annual temperatures and precipitation where slightly positive values (net emissions) were found. The mean time to ecosystem cost neutrality for each species ranged from 16 to 60 years. Knowing the time since forest management has started on a particular forest landscape now enables managers to obtain an estimate of ecosystem carbon cost per cubic meter of wood harvested for most of Canada's forests and commercial tree species. These ecosystem carbon costs can be used to generate regionalized cradle-to-gate life cycle inventories for harvested wood products across Canada.