Fig. 4

In paludified forests, stand dynamics can be synthesized using the cohort approach (Bergeron et al. 1999; Harvey et al. 2002). With this approach, it is possible to illustrate forest succession in a simple way by classifying forest stands in one of three cohorts that differ according to their age and structure, and that roughly correspond to early-, mid-, and late-successional stages of forest succession. High-severity soil burns convert these stands to first cohort stands, whereas low-severity soil burns, by not completely consuming the organic layer (gray area under the stands), create low-productivity forests that are structurally similar to third-cohort stands. Modified from Lecomte et al. (2006a), Simard et al. (2009), and Fenton et al. (2009)