Short-term effects of forest restoration on beetle diversity

Toivanen tutki väitöskirjassaan ennallistamisen, erityisesti luontaisten metsäpalojen jäljittelyn ja lahopuun tuoton, lyhyen aikavälin vaikutuksia havumetsien kovakuoriaislajistoon. Ennallistamisella pyritään luontaisten rakenteiden, toimintojen ja lajikoostumuksen palauttamiseen ihmisen muuttamiin ekosysteemeihin. Ennallistamisen tarve on suuri erityisesti Etelä-Suomessa, missä suuri osa suojelluistakaan alueista ei täytä luonnontilaisen metsän vaatimuksia pitkän metsien käytön historian johdosta. Toivasen tulokset ovat näin suoraan sovellettavissa käytännön suojelutyöhön.Toivanen havaitsi, että poltetuilla ennallistamiskohteilla kovakuoriaisten laji- ja yksilömäärät olivat merkittävästi s…

Retention forestry and biodiversity conservation: a parallel with agroforestry

In forested landscapes two general management systems – retention forestry and agroforestry – have been proposed as potentially efficient components of landscape approaches to ease the conflict between biodiversity objectives and human needs. In two recent reviews, Gustafsson et al. (2012) and Lindenmayer et al. (2012) provide a global overview of current knowledge about the practice and ecological roles of retention forestry. A few years ago, Bhagwat et al. (2008) produced a similar review addressing the role of agroforestry in biodiversity conservation. Here we draw a parallel between research on the ecological effects of retention forestry and agroforestry. We argue that conservation sci…

The conservation potential of brook-side key habitats in managed boreal forests

Today, maintaining biodiversity is included in the targets of boreal forest management. A widespread approach in northern Europe is to identify and preserve woodland key habitats within managed forests. Woodland key habitats are expected to be patches that host populations of threatened and declining species, and the preservation of these patches is assumed to enable the persistence of the focal species in the landscape. In Finland, the criteria for selecting woodland key habitats are defined in the Finnish Forest Act, and the selection has been done by forest practitioners. Our objective was to determine whether the surroundings of boreal brooks and rivulets qualified as key habitats are t…

Emulating natural disturbances in boreal Norway spruce forests: Effects on ground beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae)

The disturbance regime of boreal forests has been substantially altered by human influence in northern Europe. In this context, emulations of natural disturbance have become increasingly common as management tools to minimize negative effects of forestry on biodiversity. In a large-scale habitat-restoration experiment conducted in Norway spruce stands in southern Finland, we tested the effects of controlled burning, partial harvesting, and increasing the amount of downed wood on ground beetles (carabids). We also evaluated the effects of moisture gradients within harvested sites. We collected beetles seven years after the treatments. The moisture gradient was the strongest determinant of ca…

Rehabilitating boreal forest structure and species composition in Finland through logging, dead wood creation and fire: The EVO experiment

This paper reviews an ongoing, large-scale multidisciplinary experiment designed to study the possibilities of rehabilitating forest structure and species composition through logging, dead wood creation and fire in managed Norway spruce (Picea abies) forests in southern Finland. These forests have been utilized for several centuries with intensive management and clear-cut harvesting, which has been the dominant practice in Finland since World War II. During this era, the forest structure has become relatively even-aged, and the amount of dead wood has been reduced considerably. Simultaneously, due to an effective fire suppression policy, the role of fire in Finnish nature has been almost co…

The volume and composition of dead wood on traditional and forest fuel harvested clear-cuts

Logging residue and cut stumps are increasingly used as a renewable energy source known as forest fuel. Forest fuel harvesting obviously reduces the volume of dead wood and is likely to alter the dead wood composition, but the magnitude of the change is not known. Such information is important for the evaluation of the effects of forest fuel harvesting on biodiversity because a large proportion of forest dwelling species are directly dependent on dead wood. We measured the volume and characteristics of all dead wood units with a minimum diameter of 2 cm and a minimum length of 20 cm on 10 forest-fuel harvested and 10 traditional (control) clear-cuts. The total volume of dead wood at forest …

Kääpien kannalta ennallistamalla tuotettu lahopuu ei täysin vastaa luontaista lahopuuta

Yhteisötalous ja vertaistuotanto ovat tulevaisuus

Ennallistamispolttojen ja lahopuun lisäyksen merkitys kovakuoriaislajistolle

Metsälain tarkoittamien erityisen tärkeiden puroelinympäristöjen merkitys epifyyttisammal- ja kääpälajistolle

Flawed Meta-Analysis of Biodiversity Effects of Forest Management

It appears that the negative effect of forest managementon biodiversity has become an axiom. Whether the neg-ative effect, however, is a fact based on solid empiricalevidence is not self-evident. Most of the studies that ad-dress the issue suffer from a lack of geographic extentand taxonomic narrowness. Therefore, a synthesis draw-ing together results from the individual studies is direlyneeded. In their recent paper, Paillet et al. (2010) rise tothis challenge and present a formal pan-European meta-analysis of data from 49 papers representing 120 indi-vidual comparisons across 10 taxonomic groups. Theirsynthesis has the potential to be a landmark paper inecological research, but also to af…

Suojavyöhykkeet, kulotus ja lahopuun tuotto - vaikutukset monimuotoisuuden säilyttämiseen

Metsälain tavoitteena on edistää metsien taloudellista, ekologista ja sosiaalista hoitoa ja käyttöä niin, että metsät antavat kestävästi hyvän tuoton biologista monimuotoisuutta säilyttäen. Kestävän käytön ja luonnon monimuotoisuuden säilymisen yhteensovittamisesta ei kuitenkaan ole riittävästi tutkimustietoa. Tässä tutkimuksessa selvitetään eri metsänkäsittelytapojen vaikutuksia metsälain nojalla suojeltujen purojen ja norojen ominaispiirteiden säilymiseen sekä toimenpiteiden metsätaloudellista kannattavuutta. nonPeerReviewed

Effects of forest restoration treatments on the abundance of bark beetles in Norway spruce forests of southern Finland

Abstract Restoration of protected areas in boreal forests frequently includes creating substantial volumes of dead wood. While this benefits a wide range of dead wood dependent invertebrate species, some of these are regarded as forest pests. Therefore, the risk of elevated levels of tree mortality in surrounding commercial forests must be considered. In a large-scale field experiment in southern Finland, we studied the effects of restoration treatments on the abundance of bark beetles within and in the vicinity of restored areas, in particular focusing on Ips typographus and Pityogenes chalcographus . The treatments applied to managed Norway spruce forests were controlled burning and parti…

The effect of forest fuel harvesting on the fungal diversity of clear-cuts

Abstract The removal of logging residues and stumps from clear-cuts has become a common forestry practice. Forest fuel harvesting decreases the initially low volume of dead wood in managed forests, but the biodiversity effects are poorly known. We studied the effects of forest fuel harvesting on decomposer fungi on clear-cut Norway spruce stands in central Finland. The number of occurrences and taxa of polypores, saprotrophic agarics and pleurotoid agarics were determined on 10 forest fuel harvested and 10 control clear-cuts 4–5 years after logging. In total, we recorded 148 fungal taxa. The total number of taxa, the number of polypore occurrences, and the number of polypore species within …

Challenges of ecological restoration: Lessons from forests in northern Europe

The alarming rate of ecosystem degradation has raised the need for ecological restoration throughout different biomes and continents. North European forests may appear as one of the least vulnerable ecosystems from a global perspective, since forest cover is not rapidly decreasing and many ecosystem services remain at high level. However, extensive areas of northern forests are heavily exploited and have lost a major part of their biodiversity value. There is a strong requirement to restore these areas towards a more natural condition in order to meet the targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Several northern countries are now taking up this challenge by restoring forest biodiv…

The preferences of saproxylic beetle species for different dead wood types created in forest restoration treatments

Restoration by imitating natural disturbances is widely practised in boreal forests to increase the availability of habitats for specialized species. We studied the abundance and species richness of saproxylic beetles on different types of created dead wood during 2 years after restoration. The study was conducted on areas of a large-scale experiment in which Norway spruce ( Picea abies (L.) Karst.) forests were restored by controlled burning and partial harvesting with down wood retention in southern Finland. More beetle species were attracted to spruces than to birches and more species were attracted to burnt trees than to unburnt trees killed by girdling. Birch-living species consistent…

Created substrates do not fully mimic natural substrates in restoration: the occurrence of polypores on spruce logs

Many protected areas have been under intensive forest management prior to protection and thus lack natural ecosystem structures and dynamics. Dead wood is a key structure in forests harboring hundreds of threatened species. We investigated the ecological success of dead wood creation as a boreal forest restoration measure. We analysed whether the polypore communities of chain-saw felled and girdled (subsequently fallen) Norway spruce ( (L.) H. Karst.) logs differ from naturally formed spruce logs of similar decay stage and size. The study was conducted in Leivonmäki National Park in central Finland 8 years after the restoration measures. The average number of polypore species was highest o…

Burning of Logged Sites to Protect Beetles in Managed Boreal Forests

: Natural disturbance–based management and conservation strategies are needed to protect forest biodiversity. Boreal forests of northern Europe are typically clearcut and otherwise intensively managed for timber production. As a result, natural disturbances such as forest fires have became rare and the volume of dead wood has decreased. These changes have had a profound negative effect on species that depend on dead wood (saproxylic). Therefore, it is important to determine whether modifications of forest management methods can enhance the survival of these species. In our study area in southern Finland, we determined whether burning of logged sites and leaving trees (i.e., retention trees)…

Species richness of polypores can be increased by supplementing dead wood resource into a boreal forest landscape

1. To prevent local species extinction and to counteract population declines, we must ensure species have access to resources they require for life. This can be done through ecological restoration where previously depleted resources are reintroduced. If the restoration is conducted as a one-off action in a large area, it resembles a natural resource pulse, which should lead to increased abundance of individuals, accompanied possibly by increased species richness. Species–energy relationship and underlying theory enable predictions about how different features of resource pulses affect species richness. 2. We conducted a large-scale, controlled, randomized and replicated field experiment to …

Experimentally induced community assembly of polypores reveals the importance of both environmental filtering and assembly history

The community assembly of wood-inhabiting fungi follows a successional pathway, with newly emerging resource patches being colonised by pioneer species, followed by those specialised on later stages of decay. The primary coloniser species have been suggested to strongly influence the assembly of the later-arriving community. We created an artificial resource pulse and studied the assembly of polypores over an 11yr period to ask how the identities of the colonising species depend on the environmental characteristics and the assembly history of the dead wood unit. Our results support the view that community assembly in fungi is a highly stochastic process, as even detailed description of the …

Metsätaloudellisten kulotusalojen merkitys kovakuoriaislajiston suojelussa

Research data of article: Elo et al. 2019 Species richness of polypores can be increased by supplementing dead wood resource into a boreal forest ecosystem.