Testing for anthropogenic influence on fire regime for a 600-year period in the Jaksha area, Komi Republic, East European Russia

In an attempt to quantitatively evaluate the natural versus anthropogenic signal in site fire histories, the statistical relationship between dendrochronologically dated fire events and tree-ring chronologies (deemed to be an independent proxy for climate variation) was analyzed for 14 sites in a 2600-km(2) area of pine-dominated forests in the Komi Republic (East European Russia) over the period from 1424 to 1954. We developed a cumulative measure of statistical fit between two types of fire events (early- and late-season fires) and ring-width chronologies of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) (total ring- and latewood-width chronologies). For a given site, the statistical fit between fires and tree-ring data tended to decrease with an increasing proportion of unique fire years. Distance from a site to the nearest village (deemed to be a proxy of human impact) explained 50% of the variation in statistical fit between fires and tree-ring data. The fit decreased in the majority of the sites from the earlier (1424-1700) to the later (1700-1960) periods. We interpret this to be a result of increased human impact on the fire regime since 1700 due to intensified colonization of the area

Conservation implications of exporting domestic wood harvest to neighboring countries

Among wealthy countries, increasing imports of natural resources to allow for unchecked consumption and greater domestic environmental conservation has become commonplace. This practice can negatively affect biodiversity conservation planning if natural resource harvest is merely pushed across political borders. As an example, we focus on the boreal forest ecosystem of Finland and northwest Russia. While the majority of protected forests are in northern Finland, the majority of biodiversity is in southern Finland, where protection is more difficult due to high private ownership, and the effectiveness of functioning conservation networks is more uncertain due to a longer history of land use. In northwest Russia, the current protected areas are inadequate to preserve most of the region’s naturally dynamic and old growth forests. Increased importation of wood from northwest Russia to Finland may jeopardize the long-term viability of species in high diversity conservation areas in both Russia and Finland, through isolating conservation areas and lowering the age of the surrounding forest mosaic. The boreal forest ecosystem of Fennoscandia and northwest Russia would thus be best conserved by a large scale, coordinated conservation strategy that addresses long-term conservation goals and wood consumption, forest industries, logging practices and trade

Importing Timber, Exporting Ecological Impact

Covering 32% of the planet, boreal forests are one of the last relatively intact terrestrial biomes, and are a critical carbon sink in global climate dynamics. Mature and old-growth boreal forests provide a large number of products that are culturally and economically important, from wood-based lumber, pulp, and fuel wood, to numerous nonwood products. Intensive wood harvest and conservation of naturally dynamic intact forests tend to be mutually exclusive; where biodiversity is highly valued, wood harvests are limited or banned outright. The authors of this Policy Forum advise that increasing domestic forest protection without decreasing demand for wood necessitates an increase in foreign imports, which introduces a negative impact on forest biodiversity elsewhere. In some cases, exporting impact across the border may cause negative impacts to boomerang back into the country's protected forests

The Dynamics of Ecosystems, Biodiversity Management and Social Institutions at High Northern Latitudes

Ecosystems at high latitudes are highly dynamic, influenced by a multitude of large-scale disturbances. Due to global change processes these systems may be expected to be particularly vulnerable, affecting the sustained production of renewable wood resources and abundance of plants and animals on which local cultures depend. In this paper, we assess the implications of new understandings of high northern latitude ecosystems and what must be done to manage systems for resilience. We suggest that the focus of land management should shift from recovery from local disturbance to sustaining ecosystem functions in the face of change and disruption. The role of biodiversity as insurance for allowing a system to reorganize and develop during the disturbance and reorganization phases needs to be addressed in management and policy. We emphasize that the current concepts of ecological reserves and protected areas need to be reconsidered to developp dynamic tools for sustainable management of ecosystems in face of change. Characteristics of what may be considered as customary reserves at high latitudes are often consistent with a more dynamic view of reserves. We suggest new directions for addressing biodiversity management in dynamic landscapes at high latitudes, and provide empirical examples of insights from unconventional perspectives that may help improve the potential for sustainable management of biodiversity and the generation of ecosystem services

Low-productivity boreal forests have high conservation value for lichens

1. Land set aside for preservation of biodiversity often has low productivity. As biodiversity generally increases with productivity, due to higher or more diverse availability of resources, this implies that some of the biodiversity may be left unprotected. Due to a lack of knowledge on the species diversity and conservation value of low-productivity habitats, the consequences of the biased allocation of low-productivity land for set-asides are unknown. 2. We examined the conservation value of boreal low-productivity forests (potential tree growth <1 m(3) ha(-1) year(-1)) by comparing assemblages of tree- and deadwood-dwelling lichens and forest stand structure between productive and low-productivity forest stands. We surveyed 84 Scots pine-dominated stands in three regions in Sweden, each including four stand types: two productive (managed and unman-aged) and two low-productivity stands (on mires and on thin, rocky soils). 3. Lichen species richness was the highest in low-productivity stands on thin soil, which had similar amounts and diversity of resources (living trees and dead wood) to productive unmanaged stands. Stands in low-productivity mires, which had low abundance of living trees and dead wood, hosted the lowest lichen richness. Lichen species composition differed among stand types, but none of them hosted unique species. The differences in both species richness and composition were more pronounced in northern than in southern Sweden, likely due to shorter history of intensive forestry. 4. Synthesis and applications. Boreal low-productivity forests can have as high conservation value as productive forests, which should be reflected in conservation strategies. However, their value is far from uniform, and conservation planning should acknowledge this variation and not treat all low-productivity forests as a uniform group. Some types of low-productivity forest (e.g. on rocky soil) are more valuable than others (e.g. on mires), and should thus be prioritized in conservation. It is also important to consider the landscape context: low-productivity forests may have higher value in landscapes where high-productivity forests are highly influenced by forestry. Finally, although low-productivity forests can be valuable for some taxa, productive forests may still be important for other taxa

Good things take time – diversity effects on tree growth shift from negative to positive during stand development in boreal forests

Long‐term grassland biodiversity experiments have shown that diversity effects on productivity tend to strengthen through time, as complementarity among coexisting species increases. But it remains less clear whether this pattern also holds for other ecosystems such as forests, and if so why.Here we explore whether diversity effects on tree growth change predictably during stand development in Finland's boreal forests. Using tree ring records from mature forests, we tested whether diameter growth trajectories of dominant tree species growing in mixture differed from those in monoculture. We then compared these results with data from the world's longest running tree diversity experiment, where the same combinations of species sampled in mature forests were planted in 1999.We found that diversity effects on tree growth strengthened progressively through time, only becoming significantly positive around 20 years after seedling establishment. This shift coincided with the period in which canopy closure occurs in these forests, at which time trees begin to interact and compete above‐ground. These temporal trends were remarkably consistent across different tree species sampled in mature forests, and broadly matched growth responses observed in the much younger experimental plots.Synthesis. Our results mirror those from grassland ecosystems and suggest that canopy closure is a key phase for promoting niche complementarity in diverse tree communities. They also provide a series of testable hypotheses for the growing number of tree diversity experiments that have been established in recent years

Quantifying the Detrimental Impacts of Land-Use and Management Change on European Forest Bird Populations

The ecological impacts of changing forest management practices in Europe are poorly understood despite European forests being highly managed. Furthermore, the effects of potential drivers of forest biodiversity decline are rarely considered in concert, thus limiting effective conservation or sustainable forest management. We present a trait-based framework that we use to assess the detrimental impact of multiple land-use and management changes in forests on bird populations across Europe. Major changes to forest habitats occurring in recent decades, and their impact on resource availability for birds were identified. Risk associated with these changes for 52 species of forest birds, defined as the proportion of each species' key resources detrimentally affected through changes in abundance and/or availability, was quantified and compared to their pan-European population growth rates between 1980 and 2009. Relationships between risk and population growth were found to be significantly negative, indicating that resource loss in European forests is an important driver of decline for both resident and migrant birds. Our results demonstrate that coarse quantification of resource use and ecological change can be valuable in understanding causes of biodiversity decline, and thus in informing conservation strategy and policy. Such an approach has good potential to be extended for predictive use in assessing the impact of possible future changes to forest management and to develop more precise indicators of forest health