The velocity of postglacial migration of fire-adapted boreal tree species in eastern North America

The Earth’s climate has been warming rapidly since the beginning of the industrial era, forcing terrestrial organisms to adapt. Migration constitutes one of the most effective processes for surviving and thriving, although the speed at which tree species migrate as a function of climate change is unknown. One way to predict latitudinal movement of trees under the climate of the twenty-first century is to examine past migration since the Last Glacial Maximum. In this study, radiocarbon-dated macrofossils were used to calculate the velocity of past migration of jack pine (Pinus banksiana) and black spruce (Picea mariana), two important fire-adapted conifers of the North American boreal forest. Jack pine migrated at a mean rate of 19 km per century (km(-cent)) from unglaciated sites in the central and southeastern United States to the northern limit of the species in subarctic Canada. However, the velocity increased between unglaciated and early deglaciated sites in southern Quebec and slowed from early to mid-Holocene in central and eastern Quebec. Migration was at its lowest speed in late-Holocene times, when it stopped about 3,000 y ago. Compared with jack pine, black spruce migrated at a faster mean rate of 25 km(-cent) from the ice border at the last interstadial (Bølling/Allerød) to the species tree limit. The modern range of both species was nearly occupied about 6,000 y ago. The factors modulating the changing velocity of jack pine migration were closely associated with the warm-dry climate of the late Pleistocene–Holocene transition and the more humid climate of the mid- and late-Holocene.