Black forest: A severe moth outbreak can kill of a substantial part of the birch forest. In some areas of the ecotone forest in north-eastern Finnmark > 80% of the trees have died during an outbreak in 2002-09. Is there anything foresters can do to increase the speed of recovery of the damaged forest?
 

 

New recruits: In many forests around the world, salvage logging is a usual mean for exploiting the stems killed by insect outbreaks before the wood is attacked by rot-fungi. In 2011 we established a large-scale experimental salvage logging. The goal is to quantify the net gain in terms of forest recovery from root (basal shoots) and seed (emergence of new saplings) in the salvage logged stands and in non-logged control stands. 

 

 

Camera trapping: Both semi-domestic reindeer and moose are likely to be influenced by the vegetation changes following severe moth outbreaks. In turn they themselves influence the regeneration of the forest by browsing on the new shoots. In order to get a glimpse of the movements of ungulates in the damaged forest we use camera traps.

 

 

Did you know?

• That some forested areas in northern Finland that were killed by a moth outbreak in the 1960’s did not grow back at all? Today the areas are almost treeless and the reason is thought to be intensive grazing by reindeer.