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Scientific Research
Major Research Orientations at Parc national du Mont-Mégantic
Having extensive knowledge of the parks to better preserve them is the foundation that justifies the efforts invested in inventories, monitoring programs and scientific research.
At Parc national du Mont-Mégantic, there will be several inventory and research projects on plant life in coming years, including new developments planned for the Ruisseau-de-la-Montagne sector.
We have a variety of knowledge about this part of the park, but more in-depth studies need to be done before the work begins. For example, to ensure that new trails don’t disturb rare fauna, a detailed verification of the itineraries will be done by a botanist.
In the same vein, studies will be done on the field to see if our knowledge on the location of Arctic-alpine-type plants is complete, or if the park still has some surprises in store for us in high-altitude areas.
Find out more about scientific research in the Québec's National Parks network
Did you know?
A Snowy Paradise
The most outstanding climate feature of Mont Mégantic is the large amount of snowfall. The combined factors of altitude (cold temperature) and the orographic effect (more precipitation) explain this abundance. The zone around the park gets 30% more snow than the rest of the Appalachian Plateau. This difference is accentuated at the base of Mont Mégantic (590 metres) which gets twice as much snow as the rest of the region.
Since the winter of 2003-2004, stations for measuring the depth of snow on the ground have been installed at various locations in the park to study variations of snow cover according to altitude. At 1,000 metres, there is about 40% more snow on the ground than at the base of the mountain. With this data, we can make a fairly liberal estimate that over 7 metres of snow falls on the peaks annually!
Elsewhere in southern Québec, only the regions of Charlevoix, Monts Vallin, Gaspésie and a few sites in Bas-Saint-Laurent receive similar quantities of snow. However, the Mont Mégantic region is the only one south of the Québec City area.