Swedish research reveals secondary forests extra delicate to drought than main forests
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The dry summer season of 2018 hit Swedish forests laborious—and hardest affected have been the managed secondary forests. This in line with a brand new research from Lund College in Sweden.
Northern boreal forest ecosystems are predicted to expertise extra frequent summer season droughts sooner or later. Nearly all of Swedish forest are secondary forests which can be managed industrial forests with little range in species and construction. Solely a small half is made up of main forests which have skilled restricted direct human affect.
Up to now, it has not been recognized how main forests and managed secondary forests react to drought. In a brand new research printed within the journal Environmental Analysis Letters, a staff of researchers led from Lund, analyzed how the drought of 2018 affected the forest varieties.
“We used a singular map of main forests in Sweden and investigated whether or not there is likely to be any distinction in how these forests and neighboring secondary forests have been affected by the drought in 2018. The outcomes confirmed that secondary forests in Sweden have been extra affected by the drought than main forests have been,” says Anders Ahlström, researcher in bodily geography at Lund College.
Within the research, researchers used satellite tv for pc pictures and a map detailing greater than 300 main forests in Sweden. By analyzing a high-resolution vegetation index over these and the buffer zones surrounding the first forests, which characterize secondary forests with an analogous surroundings and drought scenario in summer season 2018, the analysis staff have been capable of achieve an image of how the dry summer season hit the totally different forest varieties.
“That main forests have been much less affected by drought results in plenty of attention-grabbing follow-up questions on what causes this distinction. It may very well be the bushes’ usually better age and measurement that maybe results in deeper roots and extra structural range. Or it may very well be that there’s extra water in these ecosystems, maybe as a result of they have not been ditched. Proper now although, we do not know what makes main forests extra secure throughout drought,” says Julika Wolf, former bodily geography researcher, now a advisor on cartography and spatial evaluation.
Main forests are uncommon in Sweden and in Europe. They characterize probably the most untouched forests we’ve left, they usually inform us of how nature appears to be like and the way it features with out main direct human affect. The forests, due to this fact, are particularly essential in understanding how environmental adjustments and human land use have an effect on ecosystems and their processes.
“This research is an efficient instance of how we will use these main forests in our analysis. On this case, we see that they’re extra secure throughout drought compared with secondary forests which were uncovered to vary similar to felling, planting, floor preparation and ditching,” concludes Anders Ahlström.
Extra info:
Julika Wolf et al, Cover responses of Swedish main and secondary forests to the 2018 drought, Environmental Analysis Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/acd6a8
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Lund College
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Swedish research reveals secondary forests extra delicate to drought than main forests (2023, July 31)
retrieved 31 July 2023
from https://phys.org/information/2023-07-swedish-secondary-forests-sensitive-drought.html
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