Abstract
Prescribed fire is becoming an increasingly used conservation and management tool aiming to restore stand structure and composition in areas that have been altered by long-term fire suppression, thereby providing appropriate habitats for species that benefit from forest fires. The effects of forest fire can be divided into specific direct effects (e.g. charred wood, resin-impregnated wood, and fire-killed wood) and indirect effects (e.g. open forest stands, deciduous successional stages, and creation of deadwood). The distinction of these effects could have important management implications. For example, if indirect effects prove to be more important, they may be achieved by methods less costly and less risky than prescribed fire. The project addresses the following research objectives. 1. Describe wood-fungal communities associated with post-fire stands. It employs a chronosequence of stands representing a range of time since fire, and for comparison, a parallel chronosequence of post-clearcut stands. It also includes the establishment of a long-term experiment to test the relative effects of treatment (burning vs. not burning) and wood substrate on the developing community 2. Determine the degree to which selected fungal species (including redlisted) depend on fire-created substrates. This laboratory-based objective applies newly-developed fungal cultivation techniques to test the dependence of selected fungal species on fire-killed and non fire-killed wood substrates
Sweden