Effects of bedrock and surficial deposit composition on moose damage in young forest stands in Finnish Lapland

Abstract

Effects of bedrock and surficial deposit composition on moose damage in young forest stands in Finnish LaplandRuuhola T., Nikula A., Nivala V., Nevalainen S., Matala J. (2016). Effects of bedrock and surficial deposit composition on moose damage in young forest stands in Finnish Lapland. Silva Fennica vol. 50 no. 3 article id 1565. 20 p. http://dx.doi.org/10.14214/sf.1565. Highlights• The effect of bedrock and soil on moose damage in forest plantations were examined.• Moose damage were concentrated in nutrient rich bedrock areas.• Bedrock of damaged stands contained a higher proportion of mafic and alkaline rocks.• Pine-dominated stands on fine grained fertile forest sites had the highest damage risk. AbstractThere is evidence that moose are attracted to fertile growth habitats apparently due to better quality and larger quantities of food. The nutrients in mineral soils originate from the weathering of bedrock and the composition of parental bedrock affects the fertility of produced mineral soil, thus affecting also the import of nutrients into the whole food web. We surveyed the connection between moose damage in forest plantations and the composition of bedrock and surficial deposits in Finnish Lapland. We used a database of compensated moose damage in private forests in years 1997−2010. Undamaged stands in National Forest Inventories (NFI) from years 1986-2008 served as a control data and moose-damaged NFI-stands as a reference data. Bedrock and surficial depositions and the location of studied stands in relation to ancient shorelines were explored by using the digital databases of the Geological Survey of Finland. Moose-damaged stands were concentrated in southwestern and east Lapland in the areas of the Peräpohja Schist Belt and Lapland's Greenstone Belt that are both composed of nutrient-rich rocks. The bedrock of damaged stands contained a higher proportion of mafic and alkaline rocks than did the control stands. Moose-damaged stands were pine-dominated and grew in more fertile forest sites than did control stands. Part of pine stands probably located in soils formerly occupied by spruce, which may increase the stands' vulnerability to biotic threats. Especially, there were relatively more moose damage in pine plantations regenerated on fine-grained mineral soils derived from nutrient rich rocks than in less fertile soils.

Modelling the effect of moose Alces alces population density and regional forest structure on the amount of damage in forest seedling stands

“…The best six models included a significant interaction term, Zone, which we originally included to account for the biogeographical variation in Finland. This is in line with previous studies, which have found several factors such as climate and snow, bedrock and soil, forage coverage, habitat patterns, inhabited areas, period of growth as well as competition with other deer species as plausible factors that explain regional variation in moose habitat selection and moose damage 16,19,33,34,43,50,51 . As the interaction with Zone was significant also with the proportions of plantations and mature forests, our results indicate that there is regional variation in factors that are directly related to the moose forage availability and, consequently, the amount of damage.…”

“…Another explanation could be that the proportion of spruce seedling stands serves as a proxy for more fertile soils, and thus for better food quality and quantities. This would be in line with the finding that there were more moose‐damaged Scots pine plantations in areas with higher amounts of nutrient‐rich bedrocks and soils 16 . However, our results contrast with those from previous studies that have found the intensity of browsing on Scots pine to follow the variation in the abundance of other browsing species 32,34 .…”

“…A plethora of factors, such as human disturbance, snow depth, topography and soil, forest landscape composition, tree species composition and spatial structure of plantations, and competition from other deer species among others, have been shown to affect moose browsing and habitat selection at the habitat and home‐range levels 14–19 . Moose are facultative food specialists/generalists, because the diet of moose consists of woody species, mainly Scots pine, in winter, but in summer, moose utilize tens of species of plants and also browse in seedling stands 20–22 .…”

The Kulbäcksliden Research Infrastructure: a unique setting for northern peatland studies

“…The bedrock consists of paragneiss resulting from the Svecokarelian orogeny (1.92-1.87 billion years ago) (SGU, 1963;Ladenberger et al, 2013). Soils formed from this parent material are often among the most nutrient poor in Fennoscandia (Ivarsson and Bjarnason, 2009;Ruuhola et al, 2016). The peatland complex is situated above the highest postglacial coastline in the area, ~257-259 m above current sea level (Laudon et al, 2021) (Figure 4) and has therefore never been inundated by the sea.…”