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On the decline of ground lichen forests in the Swedish boreal landscape: Implications for reindeer husbandry and sustainable forest management

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Abstract

Lichens are a bottleneck resource for circumpolar populations of reindeer, and as such, for reindeer husbandry as an indigenous Sami land-use tradition in northern Sweden. This study uses ground lichen data and forest information collected within the Swedish National Forest Inventory since 1953, on the scale of northern Sweden. We found a 71 % decline in the area of lichen-abundant forests over the last 60 years. A decline was observed in all regions and age classes and especially coincided with a decrease of >60 year old, open pine forests, which was the primary explanatory factor in our model. The effects of reindeer numbers were inconclusive in explaining the decrease in lichen-abundant forest. The role that forestry has played in causing this decline can be debated, but forestry can have a significant role in reversing the trend and improving ground lichen conditions.

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Acknowledgments

This study was undertaken with economic support from PLURAL (Formas), Mapping of lichen-rich forests (Formas), Baltic Landscape (EU Interreg BSR), program funding for NILS and NILS-ESS (Swedish Environmental Protection Agency) and program funding for the Swedish NFI (SLU). The data compilation was partially financed by the Sami Parliament of Sweden Eallinbiras-program. We thank S. Adler for a helpful discussion about model selection. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for constructive comments which have greatly improved the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forest Resource Management, Faculty of Forest Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 901 83, Umeå, Sweden

    Per Sandström, Neil Cory & Henrik Hedenås

  2. Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Forest Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 901 83, Umeå, Sweden

    Johan Svensson

  3. Swedish Forest Agency, Volgsjövägen 27, 912 34, Vilhelmina, Sweden

    Leif Jougda

  4. The Sami Parliament, Box 582, 831 27, Östersund, Sweden

    Nanna Borchert

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  1. Per Sandström
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  2. Neil Cory
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Correspondence to Per Sandström.

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Sandström, P., Cory, N., Svensson, J. et al. On the decline of ground lichen forests in the Swedish boreal landscape: Implications for reindeer husbandry and sustainable forest management. Ambio 45, 415–429 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-015-0759-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-015-0759-0

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