If you visit Mount Jacques-Cartier in Québec’s Gaspésie National Park, you can expect to climb through a forest of spruce and fir trees along a trail lined with bunchberry flowers. As you approach the peak, the trees get shorter and disappear at the alpine zone, where the climate is harsh and plants cling to the ground.
But this island in the sky — like dozens of other alpine summits in the northern Appalachians region — is changing. Research by my colleagues and me, using 41 years of satellite imagery of mountains across the northeastern United States and Québec’s Gaspé Peninsula, shows that these mountains are slowly greening.
