We are
very grateful to the staff and owners of Rothiemurchus Estate and to RTS Ltd. for permission to visit the fire site and to work on their land. The following individuals contributed to field and lab work: Bill Higham, Oyunn Anshus Teresa Valor Ivars, Juan de Dios Rivera, Vladimir Krivtsov and David Lambie. Weather data were obtained with assistance from Karl Kitchen of The Met Office. Michael Bruce provided useful observations of the fire’s effects and potential behaviour. This research was completed as part of the FireBeaters project with funding provided by Scottish Natural Heritage, The Met Office and Natural England. FDA-approved Drug Library in vitro Dan Thompson and two anonymous reviewers made a number of helpful suggestions. “
“The global trend selleck of declining biodiversity (Butchart et al., 2010) is evident also in the boreal forest biome, which amounts to about 30% of the world’s forest area, running circumpolar on the northern hemisphere (Hansen et al., 2010). Clearcutting, i.e. removal of all trees at harvest, is a main forest operation technique for industrial forestry in boreal forests. To counteract associated negative ecological effects, retention approaches have been introduced during the last two decades implying that e.g. some living old trees are left at harvest (Gustafsson
et al., 2012). A key function of retained trees is lifeboating, i.e. to provide refugia for species that would otherwise be lost at harvest (Franklin et al., 1997). Studies on the retention approach in forestry point to positive biodiversity effects compared to traditional clearcutting (Rosenvald and Lõhmus, 2008), although low retention levels in Fennoscandia raise questions regarding its effectiveness to promote flora and fauna (Gustafsson et al., 2010). European aspen Populus tremula L. and the closely Metalloexopeptidase related and ecologically similar Quaking aspen P. tremuloides Michx. in N. America are distributed over wide areas
on the northern hemisphere ( Farmer, 1997 and Worrell, 1995), and are key hosts for hundreds of species ( Kouki et al., 2004, Rogers and Ryel, 2008 and Lõhmus, 2011), including red-listed species ( Tikkanen et al., 2006). In Sweden it is a minority tree species comprising on average only 1.5% of the total tree volume on the productive forest land ( Swedish Forest Agency, 2012). Aspen is prioritized as a retention tree and often large-diameter aspens are left un-harvested at clearcutting. There are uncertainties to which extent species associated with old, more closed forests can survive on retained aspens in the relatively large open environment after final harvest. Transplantation of lichens is a common tool in research to monitor air pollution (e.g. Nimis et al., 2002), to study growth and ecology of species (e.g. Coxson and Stevenson, 2007a and Coxson and Stevenson, 2007b), and to assess if the technique can be used to relocate threatened species (e.g. Lidén et al., 2004).