Espinosa del Alba, Clara and Hjältén, Joakim and Sjögren, Jörgen
(2021).
Restoration strategies in boreal forests: Differing field and ground layer response to ecological restoration by burning and gap cutting.
Forest Ecology and Management. 494
, 119357
[Research article]
![]() |
PDF
1MB |
Abstract
The boreal biome is one of the largest in the world and its forests have been widely exploited for centuries. Consequently, large areas have suffered ecological simplification and loss of biodiversity. Under the current circumstances passive conservation measures are no longer enough and active restoration techniques need to be developed and assessed to preserve and recover the loss of biodiversity. We evaluated short- and long-term effects of two restoration methods aimed at mimicking natural disturbances on species richness, Shannon Diversity and community composition of vascular plants in the field layer and bryophytes in the ground layer. The experiment consisted of 18 forest stands in northern Sweden; each assigned to a different treatment: prescribed burning, gap cutting and untreated stands left as controls. A before-after control-impact (BACI) study design was applied and data was collected on three occasions: once prior to restoration (2010) and twice post restoration; one year (2012) and eight years after (2019). We analysed the differences in species richness and Shannon Diversity with linear mixed effect models and community composition changes with multivariate methods. Fire treatment caused an initial decline in diversity for both field and ground layer, but in the long-term, field layer surpassed the species richness and Shannon Diversity values found prior to restoration. Ground layer bryophytes species richness and Shannon Diversity remained lower than pre-treatment. Prescribed burning should, therefore, be used with caution in core areas for bryophyte diversity. Community composition in burned stands differed significantly between each time point as well as when compared to other treatments, for both layers. By contrast, we found no significant differences in diversity measures or community composition after gap cutting. The absence of effects from gap cutting suggests that minor changes in canopy cover does not affect the vegetation structure of forest stands. The organism group-specific responses, and temporal variability to restoration, highlight the importance of including more than one organism group, different restoration methodologies, and long-term studies in order to properly assess restoration outcomes at landscape level.
Authors/Creators: | Espinosa del Alba, Clara and Hjältén, Joakim and Sjögren, Jörgen | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Title: | Restoration strategies in boreal forests: Differing field and ground layer response to ecological restoration by burning and gap cutting | ||||||
Series Name/Journal: | Forest Ecology and Management | ||||||
Year of publishing : | 2021 | ||||||
Volume: | 494 | ||||||
Article number: | 119357 | ||||||
Number of Pages: | 10 | ||||||
Publisher: | ELSEVIER | ||||||
ISSN: | 0378-1127 | ||||||
Language: | English | ||||||
Publication Type: | Research article | ||||||
Article category: | Scientific peer reviewed | ||||||
Version: | Published version | ||||||
Copyright: | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 | ||||||
Full Text Status: | Public | ||||||
Subjects: | (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 4 Agricultural Sciences > 401 Agricultural, Forestry and Fisheries > Forest Science | ||||||
Keywords: | Restoration ecology, Boreal forest, Fire, Gap cutting, Biodiversity, Forest management | ||||||
URN:NBN: | urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-112585 | ||||||
Permanent URL: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-112585 | ||||||
Additional ID: |
| ||||||
ID Code: | 24751 | ||||||
Faculty: | S - Faculty of Forest Sciences | ||||||
Department: | (S) > Dept. of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies | ||||||
Deposited By: | SLUpub Connector | ||||||
Deposited On: | 29 Jun 2021 13:25 | ||||||
Metadata Last Modified: | 29 Jun 2021 13:31 |
Repository Staff Only: item control page