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The impacts of thinning at various intensities on the growth and mortality of mixed spruce-birch stands were investigated in thinning experiments on spruce swamps in northern and south-eastern Finland. At the time of establishment, three of the stands had recently reached the first commercial thinning stage and four were more advanced. The monitoring period was mainly 15 years, and the thinning intensity varied from heavy thinning (ca. 46 per cent of the basal area removed) to no thinning. Basal area removals of light and moderate thinning were ca. 22% and 39%, respectively. Unthinned plots had the highest volume increment. Light and moderate thinning slightly decreased the 15-year volume increment by, on an average, 1% and 8%, respectively. Heavy thinning led to a greater reduction (22%) in volume increment. The growth response to thinning intensity was evident as a higher relative volume and mean diameter increment of the living trees with decreasing stand density. Part of the volume increment on the unthinned plots was lost through natural mortality. Even light thinning significantly decreased natural mortality.

Soil samples from 15 eutrophic, 26 herb-rich, 15 tall-sedge, and 11 low-sedge drained peatland sites were analysed for easily soluble and aluminum, iron, and calcium bound phosphorus (P) using the Chang and Jackson sequential fractionation method. Compared to earlier investigations, where only total and easily soluble P contents (e.g. NH4OAc or dilute H2SO4 extractable P) in peat have been analysed, significantly higher differences between sites were observed. The eutrophic sites were characterized by four to six-fold greater Ca-bound organic P and two to three-fold greater Ca-bound inorganic P contents than on the other three site type groups, whereas the average Al-bound inorganic P content of the eutrophic sites was only one-third of that at the other site types. Substantial differences between sites were also observed for Fe-bound inorganic P, i.e. two to four-fold greater Fe-P contents were measured at the herb-rich sites compared with the other three site type groups. The stand volume growth in the 67 studied drained peatland sites correlated significantly with Al-bound organic P and Fe-bound inorganic and organic P. The study showed that a detailed fractionation and discrimination of different forms of soil P is important in increasing the understanding of the relationship between P availability and vegetation community types and stand growth on drained peatlands.

We studied the dynamics of stand structure on drained peatland sites in Scots pine dominated stands untreated with thinnings. The data consisted of consecutive stand measurements in 10 permanent sample plots where the monitoring periods varied from 29 to 66 years. We assumed that the standâs structural development was driven by the natural processes of regeneration, growth, and mortality, all related to inter-tree competition within the stand. The DBH distributions of live and dead trees at different times of post-drainage stand development â smoothed by Weibull function â were analysed to characterise the change in stand structure. The initial uneven-sized structure of the natural, widely-spaced stands became more uneven during the first decades following drainage due to enhanced regeneration. Later, as stand density and mean tree size continuously increased, the DBH distributions approached bell-shaped distributions. Accordingly, the suppressed trees showed their highest mortality rate during the first decades, but the peak of the mortality distribution shifted to larger trees along stand succession. The change in structure was faster in southern Finland than in northern Finland. We assumed the changes in stand dynamics reflected increased inter-tree competition, initiated by enhanced site productivity and increased stand stocking resulting from the ditching operation.

Drained peatlands in northern Europe comprise more than 10 million ha of forestland and thus constitute a considerable production potential in forestry. Much of this area consists of stands dominated by Scots pine and close to maturity regarding commercial thinning. The trees within these stands typically vary in terms of age, size, and growth rate. The impacts of silvicultural cuttings on these uneven-structured stands are inadequately known. We simulated the impacts of a control regime with no thinnings, and three different thinning regimes, involving different thinning intensities, on the development of fifteen pine-dominated stands in Finland. The simulations started from the first thinnings and were continued until regeneration maturity. The predicted total yields ranged from 244 to 595 m3 haâ1, depending on site and thinning regime. The highest total yields were observed for the control regime in which 18â38% of the yield was, however, predicted to self-thin by the end of the simulation. Thus, the differences in the yields of merchantable wood were fairly small among the compared regimes. However, the regimes involving thinnings generally needed less time than the control regime to reach regeneration maturity. The mean annual increment of total stem volume was at its highest in the control regime. The highest mean annual increment of merchantable wood was obtained in the regime involving two moderate thinnings, but excluding the most low-productive sites where thinnings did not increase the yield of merchantable wood.

The within-site variability of soil characteristics on sites with different soil types remains poorly quantified, although this information is crucial for the success of research on soil properties, and especially for monitoring soil properties over time. We used coefficients of variation and multilevel variance component models to examine the within-site variation of soil (0â30 cm) mineral nutrient concentrations (P, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, mg gâ1; Mn, Zn, mg gâ1) and bulk density (kg mâ3) on boreal deep-peat sites. We then evaluated the reliability of the site-level estimates (sample means) obtained using different sampling intensities (numbers of samples per site). Our 11 sites represented a single original site type within the oligotrophic nutrient level. Two of the sites were undrained while the rest had been drained for forestry at different points in time. Overall, P concentrations showed the smallest and Mn concentrations the largest within-site variation. The sampling depth contributed more than 50% of the total variance in all other characteristics except the concentrations of P and Fe, and bulk density. The variance proportions of peatland basin, site (within basin), and sampling location (within site) varied by sampling depth for most soil characteristics. The estimates obtained when using a certain number of samples per site were always more reliable for the 0â30 cm layerâs composite samples than for any single 10-cm layer at any depth sampled. On average, it was found that between 4 (P) and some 200 (Mn) samples per site would be needed for the estimates to have a theoretical 10% maximum deviation.

The inherent structural dynamics of drained peatland forests may result in a great variation in various wood and fiber properties. We examined variation in fiber and pulp properties i) among stands, ii) among trees within stands, and iii) within trees in young stands dominated by Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.). The stands, selected to cover a maximal range of the potential variation, were all at a stage of development where the first commercial thinnings would be feasible. Differences in the processability of the thinning removals were small. In similar kraft cooking conditions, a 5-unit variation in the kappa number of unbleached pulp was observed among the stands. Stand origin had no effect on pulp bleaching. The wood formed prior to drainage had a higher density, shorter fibers, was slightly slower delignified by cooking, and its yield was slightly lower than that of post-drainage wood. These properties, except for high density, are typical for juvenile wood in general, and at stand level they did not correlate with the proportion of pre-drainage wood. When the variation in fiber and pulp properties was broken down into its components, most of it was derived from tree-level in all the cases. On average, the fiber and pulp properties did not differ from those observed for first-thinning pulpwood from upland sites. Consequently, peatland-grown pulpwood may be mixed with other pulpwood in industrial processes. It would probably be best suited as the raw material for pulps with high bonding requirements, e.g. in the top ply of multi-ply board grades or in some specialty grades.

The dynamics of wood productivity on drained peatland sites was analyzed from the covariance structure generated by stand yield data of repeatedly measured permanent sample plots in 81 Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) or Norway spruce (Picea abies Karst. (L.)) stands with admixtures of birch (Betula pubescens Ehrh.). The site production potential, considered a latent variable, was assumed to follow an autoregressive process over time elapsed since drainage. As a measure of the latent variable, a relative growth rate (RGR) index was determined for all stands at the time of drainage and at four successive measurement time points following drainage (on average 16, 23, 30, and 41 years). The index was calculated as the site index of an upland conifer stand with the ratio of periodic volume growth and standing volume and adjusted by changes in stand stocking and thinning. The observed covariance structure was described by fitting a structural equation model to the data of RGR indices. When only the post-drainage measurement times were included, a quasi-simplex model with equal error variances and equal structural parameters at different measurement times fit the data well indicating a permanent covariance structure among the different measurements. Including the measurement at the time of drainage resulted in a non-permanent structure. The stand parameters at the time of drainage were poorly correlated with post-drainage growth. A considerable increase in the wood productivity of the sites was observed, being greatest during twenty years after drainage and continuing up to 40 years since drainage. This was concluded to be due to changes in site properties rather than stand structure although the effects of the single factors could not be analytically separated from one another. Our modelling approach appeared to improve long-term site productivity estimates based merely on botanical site indices.

Models for individual-tree basal area growth were constructed for Scots pine ( L.), pubescent birch ( Ehrh.) and Norway spruce ( (L.) Karst.) growing in drained peatland stands. The data consisted of two separate sets of permanent sample plots forming a large sample of drained peatland stands in Finland. The dependent variable in all models was the 5-year basal area growth of a tree. The independent tree-level variables were tree dbh, tree basal area, and the sum of the basal area of trees larger than the target tree. Independent stand-level variables were stand basal area, the diameter of the tree of median basal area, and temperature sum. Categorical variables describing the site quality, as well as the condition and age of drainage, were used. Differences in tree growth were used as criteria in reclassifying the a priori site types into new yield classes by tree species. All models were constructed as mixed linear models with a random stand effect. The models were tested against the modelling data and against independent data sets.Pinus sylvestrisBetula pubescensPicea abies

The use of random parameter models in forestry has been proposed as one method of incorporating different levels of information into prediction equations. By explicitly considering the variance-covariance structure of observations and considering some model parameters as random rather than fixed, one can incorporate more complex error structures in analysing data. Competition indices and variance component techniques were applied to 92 Scots pine ( L.) -dominated permanent sample plots on drained peatlands in Northern Finland. By quantifying stand, plot, and tree level variation, it was possible to identify the level (stand, plot or tree) at which the explanatory variables contributed to the model. The replication of plots within stands revealed little variation among plots within a single stand but significant variation occurred at stand and tree levels. Positive and negative effects of inter-tree competition are identified by examining simple correlation statistics and the random parameter model.Pinus sylvestris