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opencc-zeroNov 2023View details →

The umbrella value of caribou management strategies for biodiversity conservation in boreal forests under global change

Single-species conservation management is often proposed to preserve biodiversity in human-disturbed landscapes. How global change will impact the umbrella value of single-species management strategies remains an open question of critical conservation importance. We assessed the effectiveness of threatened boreal caribou as an umbrella for bird and beetle conservation under global change. We combined mechanistic, spatially explicit models of forest dynamics and predator-prey interactions to forecast the impact of management strategies on the survival of boreal caribou in boreal forest. We then used predictive models of species occupancy to characterize concurrent impacts on bird and beetle diversity. Landscapes were simulated based on three scenarios of climate change and four of forest management. We found that strategies that best mitigate human impact on boreal caribou were an effective umbrella for maintaining bird and beetle assemblages. While we detected a stronger effect of land-use change compared to climate change, the umbrella value of management strategies for caribou habitat conservation were still impacted by the severity of climate change. Our results showed an interplay among changes in forest attributes, boreal caribou mortality, as well as bird and beetle species assemblages. The conservation status of some species mandates the development of recovery strategies, highlighting the importance of our study which shows that single-species conservation can have important umbrella benefits despite global change.

opencc-zeroNov 2023View details →

Wind energy development can lead to guild-specific habitat loss in boreal forest bats

Forest management rarely considers protecting bats in Fennoscandian regions although all species rely on forest habitat at some point in their annual cycle. This issue is especially evident as wind parks have increasingly been developed inside Fennoscandian forests, against the advice of international bat conservation guidelines. In this study, we aimed to describe and explain bat community dynamics at a Norwegian wind park located in a boreal forest, especially to understand potential avoidance or attraction effects. The bat community was sampled acoustically and described using foraging guilds (short, medium, and long-range echolocators; SRE, MRE, LRE) as well as behavior (commuting, feeding and social calls). Sampling was undertaken at two locations per turbine: (i) the turbine pad and (ii) a paired natural habitat at ground level, as well as from a meteorological tower. We used a recently developed method for camera trapping nocturnal flying insects synchronously with bat acoustic activity. Our results reveal trends in feeding and general bat activity across foraging guilds in relation to insect availability, habitat type, wind, temperature, and seasonality. We show how seasonal patterns in behavior across guilds were affected by habitat type, temperature, and wind. We found that SRE commuting and especially feeding activity was highest in natural habitats, whereas LRE overall activity at habitats more season dependent. We found that nocturnal insect availability was positively correlated with total bat feeding activity throughout the night. Our results provide evidence for both direct and indirect risks to bat communities by wind parks: SRE bat habitat is lost to wind energy infrastructure and LRE bat may have an increased risk of fatality. Our findings provide important insights on seasonal and spatial variability in bat activity, which can inform standardizing monitoring of bats acoustically in boreal forests, at wind parks, and in combination with non-invasive insect monitoring.

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2023View details →

Data for Wildfire-induced Increases in Photosynthesis in Boreal Forest Ecosystems of North America

<div> Jupyter notebooks and datasets for Kim et al. (2024), Global Change Biology Kim, J. E., Wang, J. A., Li, Y., Czimczik, C. I., & Randerson, J. T. (2024). Wildfire-induced increases in photosynthesis in boreal forest ecosystems of North America. Global Change Biology, 30, e17151. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17151">https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17151</a> </div>

opencc-zeroMar 2024View details →

A drained nutrient-poor peatland forest in boreal Sweden constitutes a net carbon sink after integrating terrestrial and aquatic fluxes

<div>In this study, we estimated the net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) from a nutrient‐poor drained peatland forest and an adjacent natural mire in northern Sweden by integrating terrestrial carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) fluxes with aquatic losses of dissolved organic C (DOC) and inorganic C based on eddy covariance and stream discharge measurements, respectively, over two hydrological years. Each variable presented was measured during each experimental period in sites.</div>

opencc-zeroMar 2024View details →

Carnivore guild utilization of hunter-provided food sources in boreal forest

Scavenging is an alternative foraging strategy to predation for many carnivore species, as they shift between predation and scavenging in response to changes in resource availability. The use of carrion may lead to interspecific competition and is thus influenced by a risk–reward trade-off to balance coexistence with guild-members, where smaller species are expected to be more vigilant due to their vulnerability to larger competitors. We used cameras to investigate the utilization of viscera from the annual moose Alces alces hunt by four sympatric carnivore species: wolf Canis lupus, wolverine Gulo gulo, red fox Vulpes vulpes and pine marten Martes martes in south-central Scandinavia, in relation to body size and habitat. Red foxes had highest probability of visiting viscera sites in both open and forested habitats. Visits by both red foxes and pine martens were longer in open habitats, while number of visits or activity did not differ between habitats. For pine martens, the probability of visiting viscera sites was twice as high in forest compared to open habitat; consequently, red foxes showed the highest overall use of viscera. Red foxes were most vigilant, especially in open habitat, whereas wolverines and pine martens spent a higher proportion of time feeding. Increased vigilance of red foxes facilitates extended resources use in open habitat, while for pine martens, the risk–reward decision occurs before leaving forest cover and entering open habitats. Viscera were not used to a large extent by wolves or wolverines. Wolves are generally less prone to scavenging and wolverines probably use other food resources, more suitable for caching. Overall, competition did not prevent use of viscera, probably due to small-scale temporal segregation and limited use by the larger carnivores. Consequently, this pulse of human-subsidized food resources before winter may have important implications for the smaller facultative scavengers.

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2023View details →

Burned and Unburned Boreal Larch Forest Site Data, Northeast Siberia

This dataset provides field measurements and estimates of carbon stocks and combustion rates that characterize burned and unburned larch forest stands near Yakutsk in the Republic of Sakha, Russia. Measurements were conducted in 2019 at 41 stands that burned in the Batamay fire (2017) and Yert fire (2018), and at 12 unburned stands in comparable adjacent areas. A description of all variables included in this dataset is provided in the associated README file.

opencc-by-4.0Apr 2024View details →

Replication dataset for paper "A shift in transitional forests of the North American boreal will persist through 2100"

Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.

opencc-by-4.0Nov 2024View details →

Dataset related to the publication Rotbarth et al 2024, "Boreal forests are heading for an open state", PNAS

This dataset contains all variables involved in data analysis in the publication Rotbarth et al 2024, "Boreal forests are heading for an open state", PNAS.  The meta data file contains explanations for each variable in the main dataset. The second dataset includes mean annual temperatures for the years 2020-2100 based in projections from the EC-Earth3-Veg-LR model. More details on both datasets are provided in the Supplementary information Table S1.

opencc-zeroNov 2021View details →

Repeated measure plant community data after fire in boreal forest, Taiga Shield, Northwest Territories, Canada, 1998-2018

10 transects were established in the years following fire in boreal forest stands on the Taiga Shield, Northwest Territories, Canada in 1998-1999. These were remeasured annually. Six transects were returned to on 2018 for another measurement. At each measurement, we recorded ground covers, species identities, and counted tree stems (seedlings).

Changes in forest structure drive temperature preferences of boreal understory plant communities

1. The local climate in forest understories can deviate substantially from ambient conditions. Moreover, forest microclimates are often characterized by cyclic changes driven by management activities such as clear-cutting and subsequent planting. To understand how and why understory plant communities change, both ambient climate change and temporal variation in forest structure has to be considered. 2. We used inventories from 11436 productive forest sites in Sweden repeated every 10th year 1993 - 2017 to examine how variation in forest structure influences changes in the average value of minimum and maximum temperature preferences of all species in a community, i.e. community temperature indices (CTI). We then evaluated to what extent these changes were driven by local extinctions and colonizations, respectively, and to what extent the difference in CTI value between two inventories were related to changes in forest density and in macroclimate. Lastly, we tested whether effects on CTI change by these two drivers were modified by topography, soil moisture and tree species composition. 3. CTI values of the understory plant communities increased after clear-cutting, and decreased during periods when the forest grew denser. During the period immediately after clear-cutting, changes were predominately driven by colonizations of species with a preference for higher temperatures. During the forest regeneration phase, both colonization by species preferring lower temperatures and local extinctions of species preferring higher temperatures increased. The change in understory CTI over 10-year periods was explained more by changes in forest density, than by changes in macroclimate. Soil moisture, topography and forest tree species composition modified to some extent the effects of changes in forest density and in macroclimate on understory CTI values. 4. Synthesis. Via stand manipulation, forest management impacts the effects of regional climate on understory plant communities. This implies that forest management by creating denser stands locally even can counterbalance the effects of regional changes in climate by creating denser stands locally. Consequently, interpretations of changes in the mean temperature preference of species in forest understory communities should take forest management regimes into account.

Links between boreal forest management, soil fungal communities and belowground carbon sequestration

Forest management has a potential to alter belowground carbon storage. However, the underlying mechanisms, and the relative importance of carbon input and decomposition in regulation of soil carbon dynamics are poorly understood. We examined whether interactive effects of forest fertilization and thinning on carbon stocks in the topsoil of boreal forests were linked to changes in fungal community composition, biomass, and enzyme activities, in a long-term fertilization and thinning experiment distributed across 29 Pinus sylvestris forests along a 1300 km latitudinal transect in Sweden. Nitrogen fertilization increased fungal biomass, particularly towards the north and mainly by promoting root associated Ascomycetes, but the response was moderated by thinning. Fungal biomass correlated positively with carbon stocks in the organic topsoil. However, ectomycorrhizal Cortinarius species were reduced in abundance by fertilization and correlated negatively with carbon stocks. Plausibly, increased soil carbon stocks after fertilization are linked to increased input of carbon in the form of root-associated mycelium combined with loss of ectomycorrhizal decomposers within the genus Cortinarius. These fungal responses to fertilization may mediate a natural climate solution by promoting carbon sequestration in the organic topsoil, but the effect of fertilization may also be undesired from a biodiversity perspective.

Tree water uptake enhances nitrogen acquisition in a fertilized boreal forest – but not under nitrogen poor conditions

Understanding how plant water uptake interacts with acquisition of soil nitrogen (N) and other nutrients is fundamental for predicting plant responses to a changing environment, but it is an area where models disagree. We present a novel isotopic labelling approach which reveals spatial patterns of water and N uptake, and their interaction, by trees. The stable isotopes 15N and 2H were applied to a small area of the forest floor in stands with high and low soil N availability. Uptake by surrounding trees was measured. The sensitivity of N acquisition to water uptake was quantified by statistical modelling. Trees in the high-N stand acquired twice as much 15N as in the low-N stand and around half of their N uptake was dependent on water uptake (2H enrichment). In contrast, in the low-N stand there was no positive effect of water uptake on N uptake. We conclude that tree N acquisition was only marginally dependent on water flux toward the root surface under low N conditions but under high-N conditions, the water-associated N uptake was substantial. The results suggest a fundamental shift in N acquisition strategy under high-N conditions.

opencc-by-4.0Mar 2022View details →

Short-interval fires increasing in the Alaskan boreal forest as fire self-regulation decays across forest types: Code and data

Code and data to reproduce results in the associated paper. Additional downloads of climate data and various R packages will be required for some analyses. Abstract: Climate drivers are increasingly creating conditions conducive to higher frequency fires. In the coniferous boreal forest, the world’s largest terrestrial biome, fires are historically common but relatively infrequent. Post-fire, regenerating forests are generally resistant to burning (strong fire self-regulation), favoring millennial coniferous resilience. However, short intervals between fires are associated with rapid, threshold-like losses of resilience and changes to broadleaf or shrub communities, impacting carbon content, habitat, and other ecosystem services. Fires burning the same location 2+ times comprise approximately 4% of all Alaskan boreal fire events since 1984, and the fraction of short-interval events (<20 years between fires) is increasing with time. While there is strong resistance to burning for the first decade after a fire, from 10-20 years post-fire resistance appears to decline. Reburning is biased towards coniferous forests and in areas with seasonally variable precipitation, and that proportion appears to be increasing with time, suggesting continued forest shifts as changing climatic drivers overwhelm the resistance of early postfire landscapes to reburning. As area burned in large fire years of ~15 years ago begin to mature, there is potential for more widespread shifts, which should be evaluated closely to understand finer grained patterns within this regional trend.

opencc-by-4.0Apr 2022View details →

Snow pit dataset from "Comparison of snowpack structure in gaps and under the canopy in a humid boreal forest"

This original dataset contains snow pit measurements collected at Montmorency Forest (47.29°N, 71.17°W) from 22 November, 2018 to 6 June, 2019. The study site is a balsam fir – whit birch stand on a 12° slope of north-east aspect. The dataset is described in the publication “Comparison of snowpack structure in gaps and under the canopy in a humid boreal forest” from Bouchard et al., 2022. In this dataset you can find:   <ul> <li>inside forest gaps: <ul> <li>26 snow height measurements (26 data points)</li> <li>26 snowpack stratigraphy (380 data points)</li> <li>26 snow temperature profiles (427 data points)</li> <li>26 snow density profiles (803 data points)</li> <li>2 snow specific surface area (SSA) profiles (97 data points)</li> </ul> </li> </ul>   <ul> <li>under the canopy: <ul> <li>26 snow height measurements (26 data points)</li> <li>26 snowpack stratigraphy (227 data points)</li> <li>26 snow temperature profiles (325 data points)</li> <li>26 snow density profiles (623 data points)</li> <li>2 snow SSA profiles (89 data points)</li> </ul> </li> </ul>   For density measurements, the height value corresponds to the center of the 3-cm thick box cutter. For the SSA, the value is measured optically at the top of the sample. This value is representative of the top 1 cm of the snow sample, as this is the typical e-folding depth of 1310 nm radiation in snow. Grain type codes for the snowpack stratigraphy corresponds to the International Classification for Seasonal Snow (Fierz et al., 2009):   <ul> <li>PP: Precipitation particle</li> <li>DF: Decomposed and Fragmented precipitation particles</li> <li>RG: Rounded Grains</li> <li>FC: Faceted Crystals</li> <li>DH: Depth Hoar</li> <li>MFpc: Melt Forms – rounded polycrystals</li> <li>MFcl: Melt Forms – clustered rounded grains</li> <li>MFcr: Melt Forms – melt-freeze crusts</li> <li>IF: Ice Formations</li> </ul>

Re-assessment of the climatic controls on the carbon and water fluxes of a boreal aspen forest over 1996-2016: changing sensitivity to long-term climatic conditions

Recent evidence suggests that the relationships between climate and boreal tree growth are generally non-stationary; however, it remains uncertain whether the relationships between climate and carbon (C) fluxes of boreal forests are stationary or have changed over recent decades. In this study, we used continuous eddy-covariance and microclimate data over 21 years (1996-2016) from a 100-year-old trembling aspen stand in central Saskatchewan, Canada to assess the relationships between climate and ecosystem C and water fluxes. Over the study period, the most striking climatic event was a severe, 3-year drought (2001-2003). Gross ecosystem production (GEP) showed larger interannual variability than ecosystem respiration (Re) over 1996-2016, but Re was the dominant component contributing to the interannual variation in net ecosystem production (NEP) during post-drought years. The inter-annual variations in evapotranspiration (ET) and C fluxes were primarily driven by temperature and secondarily by water availability. Two-factor linear models combining precipitation and temperature performed well in explaining the inter-annual variation in C and water fluxes (R2>0.5). The temperature dependence of all three C fluxes (NEP, GEP and Re) declined over 1996-2015 (p<0.05), and as a result, the phenological controls on annual NEP weakened. The decreasing temperature sensitivity of the C fluxes over 1996-2015 may reflect changes in forest structure, related to the over-maturity of the aspen stand at 100-years of age and exacerbated by high tree mortality following the severe 2001-2003 drought. These results may provide an early warning signal of driver shift or even an abrupt status shift of aspen forest dynamics. They may also imply a universal weakening in the relationship between temperature and GEP as forests become over-mature, associated with the structural and compositional changes that accompany forest ageing.

opencc-zeroMay 2022View details →

Ericaceous dwarf shrubs contribute a significant but drought-sensitive fraction of soil respiration in a boreal pine forest

Boreal forests often have a dense understory of ericaceous dwarf shrubs with ecological adaptations that contrast those of the canopy-forming trees. It is therefore important to quantify contributions by understory shrubs to ecosystem processes and disentangle shrub- and tree-driven responses, and their interactions, to climatic factors. We quantified soil respiration driven by the pine canopy and the ericaceous shrub understory over three years, using a factorial pine root-exclusion and shrub-removal experiment in a mature Pinus sylvestris forest. Soil temperature and moisture-related responses of respiration attributed to autotrophic (shrubs, pine roots) and heterotrophs were compared. Additionally, we assessed effects of interactions between these functional groups on soil nitrogen availability and respiration. Understory shrubs accounted for 22 ± 10% of total autotrophic respiration, reflecting the ericaceous proportion of fine root production in the ecosystem. Heterotrophic respiration constituted about half of total soil respiration. Shrub-driven respiration was more susceptible to drought than heterotrophic- and pine-driven autotrophic respiration. While the respiration attributed to canopy and understory remained additive, indicating no competitive release, the plant guilds competed for inorganic N. Ericaceous understory shrubs accounted for a small, yet significant, share of total growing season soil respiration. Overlooking understory respiration may lead to erroneous partitioning and modelling of soil respiration mediated by functional guilds with contrasting responses to soil temperature and moisture. A higher share of activity of both heterotrophs and pine roots, under drought conditions, could have important implications for soil organic matter accumulation and decomposition as the climate changes.

opencc-by-4.0Nov 2021View details →

Diurnal evolution of negative atmospheric ions above the boreal forest: From ground level to the free troposphere

The data used in the publication is available for download. The unit of the data can be found in the header of the csv files. Please note, that the mass spectrometer data is in UTC+3 time, the rest of the data in UTC+2 time.

opencc-zeroJun 2022View details →

High-level nitrogen additions accelerate soil respiration reduction over time in a boreal forest

Increased nitrogen (N) inputs are widely recognized to reduce soil respiration (Rs), but how N deposition affects the temporal dynamics of Rs remains unclear. Using a decade-long fertilization experiment in a boreal larch forest (Larix gmelini) in northeast China, we found that the effects of N additions on Rs showed a temporal shift from a positive effect in the short-term (increased by 8% on average in the first year) to a negative effect over the longer term (decreased by 21% on average in the eleventh year). The rates of decrease in Rs for the higher N-levels were almost twice as high as those of the low N-level. Our results suggest that the reduction in Rs in response to increased N input is accelerated by high-level N additions, and experimental high N applications are likely to overestimate the contribution of N deposition to soil carbon sequestration in boreal forest.

opencc-zeroJul 2022View details →

Tracking freshwater browning and coastal water darkening from boreal forests to the Arctic Ocean

The forest cover of Northern Europe has been steadily expanding during the last 120 years. More terrestrial vegetation and carbon fixation leads to more export to surface waters. This may cause freshwater browning, as more degraded plant-litter ends up as chromophoric (coloured) dissolved organic matter. Although most freshwater ultimately drains to coastal waters, the link between freshwater browning and coastal water darkening is poorly understood. Here, we explore this relationship through a combination of centennial records of forest and coastal water clarity, contemporary optical measurements in lakes and coastal waters, as well as an ocean drift model. We suggest a link between forest cover in Northern Europe and coastal water clarity in the Baltic, Kattegat and Skagerrak Sea and show how brown coloured freshwater from Northern European catchments can dictate coastal water clarity across thousands of kilometres, from the Baltic lakes to the Barents Sea.