Export of suspended solids and dissolved elements from peatland areas after ditch network maintenance in south-central Finland

Nieminen, Mika; Ahti, Erkki; Koivusalo, Harri; Mattsson, Tuija; Sarkkola, Sakari; Laurén, Ari

doi:10.14214/sf.161

Cited by 64 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The concentrations for the treatment catchments as if they had not been treated are calculated as f j (a j C ij f j -1 ). This approach is based on the work by Laurén et al (2009) and Nieminen et al (2010) and further information can be found therein. The advantage of this approach, as compared to more conventional methods is that the random variability between treatment and control catchments during the calibration period and the proportional size of the treated area can be taken into account in the interpretation of the treatment effects.…”

Section: Calculations and Statistical Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They increase nutrient concentrations and loads in receiving waters (Ahtiainen and Huttunen 1999;Kreutzweiser et al 2008;Nieminen et al 2010) which may result in degradation of water quality, eutrophication, and formation of harmful algal blooms (Conley et al 2009). In Fennoscandia, several hundred thousand hectares of forests are clearcut annually and the majority of clear-cut areas are prepared mechanically before regeneration operations (Swedish Forest Agency 2013;Ylitalo 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A method to estimate the impact of clear-cutting on nutrient concentrations in boreal headwater streams

Palviainen

Finér

Laurén

et al. 2015

Ambio

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Large-scale forestry operations, like clearcutting, may impair surface water quality if not done with environmental considerations in mind. Catchment and country level estimates of nutrient loads from forestry are generally based on specific export values, i.e., changes in annual exports due to the implemented forestry operations expressed in kg ha -1 . We introduce here a specific concentration approach as a method to estimate the impact of clear-cutting on nutrient concentrations and export in headwater streams. This new method is potentially a more dynamic and flexible tool to estimate nutrient loads caused by forestry, because variation in annual runoff can be taken into account in load assessments. We combined water quality data from eight boreal headwater catchment pairs located in Finland and Sweden, where the effect of clear-cutting on stream water quality has been studied experimentally. Statistically significant specific concentration values could be produced for total nitrogen, nitrate, ammonium, and phosphate. The significant increases in the concentrations of these nutrients occurred between 2 and 6 years after clearcutting. Significant specific concentration values could not be produced for total phosphorus and total organic carbon with the whole dataset, although in some single studies significant increases in their concentrations after clear-cutting were observed. The presented method enables taking into account variation in runoff, temporal dynamics of effects, and the proportional size of the treated area in load calculations. The number of existing studies considering large site-specific variation in responses to clear-cutting is small, and therefore further empirical studies are needed to improve predictive capabilities of the specific concentration values.

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Section: Calculations and Statistical Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A method to estimate the impact of clear-cutting on nutrient concentrations in boreal headwater streams

Palviainen

Finér

Laurén

et al. 2015

Ambio

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“…Consequently, the possibilities to reduce TOC, DON and DOP loads are restricted to areas where anthropogenic sources are significant. Forestry accounted only for a small proportion of TOC export which may due to the fact that while forest regeneration increases TOC export (Nieminen 2004;Schelker et al 2012) maintenance ditching has the opposite effect (Joensuu et al 2002;Nieminen et al 2010). In the study catchments, the annual area of clearcuttings during 1999-2013 varied from 0.11 to 0.46 % of the forest area which was a little less than the whole country average (0.81 %; Finnish Statistical Yearbook of Forestry 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The advantage of the method is that it requires considerably less input information than the use of processbased models. Some uncertainties are, however, always related to the specific export coefficients and the area estimates of different land-use forms (McFarland and Hauck 2001;Johnes and Butterfield 2002;Nieminen et al 2010). There are variabilities in the specific export values in the literature which reflects site specific variations in environmental conditions such as slope and soil texture (McFarland and Hauck 2001;Nieminen et al 2010;Puustinen et al 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The annual background leaching from unmanaged peatland and forest dominated catchments have been reported to be 15-140 kg ha -1 for TOC and 0.2-2.1 kg ha -1 for DON, respectively (Mattsson et al 2003;Kortelainen et al 2006). Previous studies have mainly concentrated on quantifying background leaching (Mattsson et al 2003;Kortelainen et al 2006) or the effect of certain forest or agricultural management practices on TOC, DON and DOP export in small first order catchments (Joensuu et al 2002;Nieminen et al 2010;Puustinen et al 2010;Schelker et al 2012;Palviainen et al 2014;Soinne et al 2014), and the mutual significance of different TOC, DON and DOP loading sources in catchments with mixed land use have so far received little attention.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Predicting the export and concentrations of organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in boreal lakes by catchment characteristics and land use: A practical approach

Palviainen

Laurén

Launiainen

et al. 2016

Ambio

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The majority of C, N and P in boreal lakes are in organic form. Organically bound nutrients are released through biodegradation or photodegradation which affects the water quality, eutrophication and greenhouse gas emissions of lakes. We tested whether open land-use data combined with land-use-specific export coefficients can be used to predict total organic carbon (TOC), dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) and dissolved organic phosphorus (DOP) loading and lake water concentrations. Using data from 12 lake catchments in eastern Finland, we found that land use and management of the catchment explained a substantial proportion of the variations in TOC (r 2 = 0.78), DON (r 2 = 0.55) and DOP (r 2 = 0.80) concentrations between lakes. The computation does not account for in-lake processes, which are reflected as mismatch between the predicted and observed concentrations. However, this simple practical approach is useful in ranking lakes according to their water quality. The results indicated that natural sources dominate TOC, DON and DOP exports; the background leachings accounted for 57-99 %, 48-96 % and 55-99 % of TOC, DON and DOP export, respectively. The proposed method has promise as a practical decision support tool for assessing the impacts of land use on water quality. The results showed that possibilities to control TOC, DON and DOP loading to surface waters are limited to catchments where the peatland proportion is low and anthropogenic sources significant.

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Distributed hydrological modeling with channel network flow of a forestry drained peatland site

Haahti

Warsta

Kokkonen

et al. 2016

Water Resources Research

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Peatland drainage has been an important component of forestry management in the boreal zone and the resulting ditch networks are maintained regularly to sustain forest productivity. In Finland, this is recognized as the most detrimental forestry practice increasing diffuse loads of suspended solids. Alongside forestry management on peatlands, interest in peatland restoration has grown lately. Distributed hydrological modeling has the potential to address these matters by recognizing relevant physical mechanisms and identifying most suitable strategies for mitigating undesired outcomes. This study investigates the utility of such a modeling approach in a drained peatland forest environment. To provide a suitable tool for this purpose, we coupled channel network flow to the three-dimensional distributed hydrological model FLUSH. The resulting model was applied to a 5.2 ha drained peatland forest catchment in Eastern Finland. The model was calibrated and validated using field measurements obtained over frost-free periods of five months. The application showed that distributed modeling can disentangle the importance of spatial factors on local soil moisture conditions, which is significant as peatland drainage aims to control these conditions. In our application, we limited the spatial aspect to the topography and the drainage network, and found that the drainage configuration had a clear effect on the spatial soil moisture patterns but that the effect was less pronounced during the wetter summer. Future applications of distributed modeling in this field comprises investigating the impacts of other spatial factors, modeling channel erosion and solid transport to address strategies for their mitigation, and evaluating restoration schemes.

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Export of suspended solids and dissolved elements from peatland areas after ditch network maintenance in south-central Finland

Cited by 64 publications

References 14 publications

A method to estimate the impact of clear-cutting on nutrient concentrations in boreal headwater streams

A method to estimate the impact of clear-cutting on nutrient concentrations in boreal headwater streams

Predicting the export and concentrations of organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in boreal lakes by catchment characteristics and land use: A practical approach

Distributed hydrological modeling with channel network flow of a forestry drained peatland site

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