Abstract
Forestry aims at maximizing production, while maintaining biodiversity, but these aims often conflict. Evidence based information about effects of conservation measures on diversity may guide policy decisions about how and when different management regimes should be implemented. Ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi - a highly diverse group of forest organisms, are sensitive to clear-cutting, since they live in tight symbiosis with the trees. Continuous cover forestry has been proposed as a way to diminish losses of EM diversity in association with harvest. In collaboration with stakeholders (Sveaskog, Skogforsk and the Swedish Forestry Board) we have initiated two large-scale field experiments in contrasting forest types, with plots subjected to harvest at different intensities. We now request funding to monitor treatment effects on communities of soil fungi, using high throughput sequencing of marker gene amplicons. We will investigate whether clear-cutting leads to complete or partial loss of EM diversity at the local scale, and how mycorrhizal decline in turn affects free-living fungi. Furthermore, we will test if EM diversity may be preserved by leaving trees at harvest, and establish rough quantitative relationships between the degree of thinning and diversity impact. By analysing EM fungi on seedlings planted in the experimental plots, we will also investigate whether continuous cover forestry may enable a more efficient transfer of symbiont diversity between forest generations.
Sweden