Dead wood profile of a semi-natural boreal forest : implications for sampling
Abstract
Dead wood profile of a forest is a useful tool for describing forest characteristics and assessing forest disturbance history. Nevertheless, there are few studies on dead wood profiles, including both coarse and fine dead wood, and on the effect of sampling intensity on the dead wood estimates. In a semi-natural boreal forest, we measured every dead wood item over 2 cm in diameter from 80 study plots. From eight plots, we further recorded dead wood items below 2 cm in diameter. Based on these data we constructed the full dead wood profile, i.e. the overall number of dead wood items and their distribution among different tree species, volumes of different size and decay stage categories. We discovered that while the number of small dead wood items was immense, their number dropped drastically from the diameter below 1 cm to diameters 2–3 cm. Different tree species had notably different abundance-diameter distribution patterns: spruce dead wood comprised most strikingly the smallest diameter fractions, whereas aspen dead wood comprised a larger share of large-diameter items. Most of the dead wood volume constituted of large pieces (>10 cm in diameter), and 62% of volume was birch. The variation in the dead wood estimates was small for the numerically dominant tree species and smallest diameter categories, but high for the sub-dominant tree species and larger size categories. In conclusion, the more the focus is on rare tree species and large dead wood items, the more comprehensive should the sampling be.
Main Authors
Format
Articles
Research article
Published
2019
Series
Subjects
Publication in research information system
Publisher
Suomen metsätieteellinen seura
The permanent address of the publication
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-201910154465Use this for linking
Review status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0037-5330
DOI
https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.10010
Language
English
Published in
Silva Fennica
Citation
- Halme, P., Purhonen, J., Marjakangas, E.-L., Komonen, A., Juutilainen, K., & Abrego, N. (2019). Dead wood profile of a semi-natural boreal forest : implications for sampling. Silva Fennica, 53(4), Article 10010. https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.10010
Additional information about funding
This study was funded by the Finnish Ministry of Environment (PUTTE grant to PH) and by Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Finnish Foundation for Nature Conservation (grants to JP)
Copyright© Authors, 2019