From Efficiency to Resilience : Systemic Change towards Sustainability after the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the vulnerability of current socio-economic systems and thrown into question the dominant global paradigm geared towards short-term financial efficiency. Although it has been acknowledged for several decades that this paradigm has detrimental impacts on the climate, the environment and global welfare, the pandemic has now offered a grim ‘rehearsal round’ for more serious crises that are to come with the accelerating climate emergency, loss of biodiversity and growing human inequalities. Along with worsening climate change, there are looming risks for mass migrations and armed conflicts as habitats capable of supporting human wellbeing become scarce, such a…

Urban forest soils harbour distinct and more diverse communities of bacteria and fungi compared to less disturbed forest soils.

Anthropogenic changes to land use drive concomitant changes in biodiversity, including that of the soil microbiota. However, it is not clear how increasing intensity of human disturbance is reflected in the soil microbial communities. To address this issue, we used amplicon sequencing to quantify the microbiota (bacteria and fungi) in the soil of forests (n=312) experiencing four different land uses, national parks (set aside for nature conservation), managed (for forestry purposes), suburban (on the border of an urban area) and urban (fully within a town or city), which broadly represent a gradient of anthropogenic disturbance. Alpha diversity of bacteria and fungi increased with increasin…

Individual and combined effects of disturbance and N addition on understorey vegetation in a subarctic mountain birch forest

Questions: What are the effects of repeated disturbance and N-fertilization on plant community structure in a mountain birch forest? What is the role of enhanced nutrient availability in recovery of understorey vegetation after repeated disturbance? How are responses of soil micro-organisms to disturbance and N-fertilization reflected in nutrient allocation patterns and recovery of understorey vegetation after disturbance? Location: Subarctic mountain birch forest, Finland. Methods: We conducted a fully factorial experiment with annual treatments of disturbance (two levels) and N-fertilization (four levels) during 1998‐2002. We monitored treatment effects on above-ground plant biomass, plan…

Soidensuojelutyöryhmän ehdotus soidensuojelun täydentämiseksi

Understorey plant and soil responses to disturbance and increased nitrogen in boreal forests

Question: How do N fertilization and disturbance affect the understorey vegetation, microbial properties and soil nutrient concentration in boreal forests? Location: Kuusamo (66°22′N; 29°18′E) and Oulu (65°02′N; 25°47′E) in northern Finland. Methods: We conducted a fully factorial experiment with three factors: site (two levels), N fertilization (four levels) and disturbance (two levels). We measured treatment effects on understorey biomass, vegetation structure, and plant, soil and microbial N and C concentrations. Results: The understorey biomass was not affected by fertilization either in the control or in the disturbance treatment. Fertilization reduced the biomass of deciduous Vacciniu…

Soiden ennallistamisen suoluonto-, vesistö-, ja ilmastovaikutukset. Vertaisarvioitu raportti.

Tämän selvityksen tarkoituksena on tuottaa kirjallisuuskatsaus ja siihen pohjautuvia johtopäätöksiä soiden ennallistamisen ilmasto-, vesistö- ja suoluontovaikutuksista. Selvitys pyrkii erityisesti kasaamaan yhteen uusimpia tutkimustuloksia ja aineistoja ennallistamisen vaikutuksiin liittyen ja toisaalta muodostamaan kokonaiskuvan laaja-alaisempaa soiden ennallistamisstrategiaa silmällä pitäen. Suoekosysteemit reagoivat kokonai-suutena varsin hyvin perinteisiin ennallistamistoimiin. Ennallistaminen ei kuitenkaan ole ongelmatonta, sillä ennallistamistoimet eli yleensä kaivin- ja metsäkonetyöt sekä ennallistamisen jälkeisen alkuvaiheen voimakkaat ekosysteemin muutokset voivat aiheuttaa yhteisk…

Potential impacts of a future Nordic bioeconomy on surface water quality

AbstractNordic water bodies face multiple stressors due to human activities, generating diffuse loading and climate change. The ‘green shift’ towards a bio-based economy poses new demands and increased pressure on the environment. Bioeconomy-related pressures consist primarily of more intensive land management to maximise production of biomass. These activities can add considerable nutrient and sediment loads to receiving waters, posing a threat to ecosystem services and good ecological status of surface waters. The potential threats of climate change and the ‘green shift’ highlight the need for improved understanding of catchment-scale water and element fluxes. Here, we assess possible bio…

Monitoring peatland water table depth with optical and radar satellite imagery

Peatland water table depth (WTD) and wetness have widely been monitored with optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing but there is a lack of studies that have used multi-sensor data, i.e., combination of optical and SAR data. We assessed how well WTD can be monitored with remote sensing data, whether multi-sensor approach boosts explanatory capacity and whether there are differences in regression performance between data and peatland types. Our data consisted of continuous multiannual WTD data from altogether 50 restored and undrained Finnish peatlands, and optical (Landsat 5–8, Sentinel-2) and Sentinel-1 C-band SAR data processed in Google Earth Engine. We calculated rando…

BioTIME: A database of biodiversity time series for the Anthropocene

Abstract Motivation The BioTIME database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time. These data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics. BioTIME is being developed as a community-led open-source database of biodiversity time series. Our goal is to accelerate and facilitate quantitative analysis of temporal patterns of biodiversity in the Anthropocene. Main types of variables included The database contains 8,777,413 species abundance records, from assemblages consistently sampled for a minimum of 2 years, which need not necessarily be consecutive. In addition, th…

Kielelliset strategiat lasten yhteisöllisyyden ilmaisijoina

Trade-offs and synergies between biodiversity and ecosystem services in restored, reforested, abandoned, and energy-producing peatlands

There is a need to optimize the use of peatlands to simultaneously reach the biodiversity, environmental goals and the economic needs. Besides raw material timber and peat, peatlands provide a variety of valuable services, such as biodiversity, C sequestration and hydrological control. High pressure is targeted to these ecosystems by e.g. forest, bioenergy and peat industries. In Finland, a country with the highest percentage cover of peatlands in the world (30% of total land area, almost 10 mill. ha), about 60% of peatland area has been drained for forestry. This had led to the degradation of biodiversity, environmental loading to watercourses, and emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). We us…