Line Rochefort, full professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at Université Laval, and founder and director of the Peatland Ecology Research Group (PERG), was awarded an honorary doctorate in agriculture and forestry from the University of Eastern Finland on June 7, 2024.

Line Rochefort is recognized as one of the world's pioneers in peatland restoration. Since the 1990s, she has worked closely with the Canadian peat industry, developing, among other things, a technique for restoring Sphagnum-dominated peatlands known as the Moss Layer Transfer Technique (MLTT). MLTT is now used not only in North America, but also in South America, Japan, Australia and Europe. From 2003 to 2018, Line Rochefort held the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Peatland Management. Since the mid-2000s, she has diversified her research on wetland restoration types and approaches to include, among others, fens (minerotrophic peatlands), peatland ecotones, coastal bogs, Sphagnum moss farming, peatlands degraded by road construction with mineral substrate, oil sands drilling platforms and seismic lines.

Line Rochefort carries out her research in collaboration with numerous Canadian and international researchers, forming multidisciplinary teams with complementary expertise. She has been working with researchers in Finland since the early 2000s, in particular with Professor Eeva-Stiina Tuittila (University of Eastern Finland), who came to Line Rochefort's laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow from 2001 to 2002.

This honorary doctorate recognizes all the work Line Rochefort has done to advance knowledge of peatland and bryophyte ecology, and ecosystem restoration and rehabilitation.

Link to the University of Eastern Finland announcement.

Some photos of the event:

^{Line Rochefort with Eeva-Stiina Tuittila at the University of Eastern Finland. Photo: A. Moreau}