For each plantation site, climatic data (Table 1) were interpolated from data collected from 2013–16 in nearby weather stations using the BioSIM software (Régnière and St-Amant, 2007). Furthermore, permanent weather stations were installed in the Watford, Asselin and Deville sites since 2013, with collected data used to confirm the accuracy of BioSIM data. Climate conditions varied considerably among the sites during the two years of the experiment (Table 1). Mean annual temperature (MAT) was highly influenced by site location. It differed by 5.5 °C between the coolest and the warmest sites. Total growing season precipitation (TGSP) decreased with the longitude of the plantation sites (Table 1).