In the past two centuries, human activities have caused major changes in the tree species composition of southern Québec, Canada

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Abstract
We compared the presettlement forest composition of 60 lots of southern Québec, as reconstructed from wood sales reported in old notary deeds, with their present day composition. Some tree species, such as sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and ash (Fraxinus americana and/or F. pennsylvanica), have shown important increases since European colonization, while others have decreased sharply. In a site-by-site comparison, there are many instances where a species sold from a particular lot is completely absent from this lot today. Tamarack (Larix laricina) and black spruce (Picea mariana), two species that appear in the notary deeds, were completely eliminated from the studied lots. The apparent discrepancy between the predominance of lowlands in the landscape and the low presence in the notary deeds of tree species that prefer more humid conditions suggests that precolonial forests on the clay plain and lowlands were sparse or patchy or were composed of tree species of little stature or commercial value. For mesic sites, sales reported in the notary deeds suggest that the presettlement forest in the Haut-Saint-Laurent region corresponded to the maple-beech-birch forest type and that the most important change since European settlement is a loss or decrease in the abundance of American beech (Fagus grandifolia) and yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis). In this agro-forested landscape, there is no indication of an eventual return toward the original forest composition, nor should we expect one considering the extent and the irreversible nature of some of the ecosystem modifications caused by human activity.