All the members of our group are sharing the highlights of our current research in the ECCB congress, starting next Tuesday, 12.6.2018 in Jyväskylä. In the congress, our sessions are at Tuesday (poster, Juni and Niko, Forest Management and Biodiversity session), Wednesdey (talk by Tuomas, Ecological processes in forest ecosystems session), Thursday (talk by Timo, Natural disturbance emulation in forest conservation and sustainable ecosystem management session, also co-chaired by Timo), and Friday (talk by Niko, Forest Management and Biodiversity II session). Tuomas also chairs the “Human-Wildlife conflicts” session at Wednesday. Come to meet us and share your ideas!
Forest fires were historically the most important disturbance agent in the northern European boreal forest, but have virtually disappeared in the 20th century. However, past fires have left persistent legacies in forest structure and, due to their strong influence on forest age structures, continue influencing forest dynamics long since their disappearance. It is hence clear that we need knowledge on past fire occurrence, to be able to attribute the changes we observe in the forest to their drivers.
We reconstructed past fires in three northern boreal landscapes (each 2 km x 2 km) in Värriö and Maltio strict nature reserves in northeastern Finland. For the reconstructions, we used dendrochronological methods (i.e., methods based on tree ring widths), and described the occurrence of fires in the past 300 years. For these three landscapes, the average fire cycles (a measure of fire activity) were 72 and 156 years in Scots pine-dominated landscapes, and 579 years in a Norway spruce-dominated landscape. The numbers of fires during the past three centuries were clearly related with soil properties: forests on soils that retain water better had experienced fewer fires than forests on coarser soils with lower water holding capacity.
It is noteworthy that although tree growth and regeneration in these northern regions are considered highly climate-sensitive, fires have been a major driver of forest dynamics in these areas. It is also clear that the continued absence of fires will lead to considerable changes in the forest structure and species composition in the future, even if the reserves are strictly protected from direct human influence.
The study is published in Boreal Environment Research, and can be found here.