MI6 Dead wood on wooded mires

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Development

According to the tenth National Forest Inventory (NFI), there is on average 2.9 m3 of dead wood per hectare in wooded mires (that is, on spruce and pine mires). This total volume is divided quite evenly between southern and northern Finland, but more unevenly between non-protected and protected areas.

Non-protected wooded mires contain on average 2.5 m3/ha of dead wood in southern Finland and 2.6 m3/ha in northern Finland. This difference, which is considerably smaller in wooded mires than forests on mineral soils (FO6), reflects the fact that productive spruce mires are much more common in southern than in northern Finland where sparsely wooded pine mires dominate.

Protected mires in northern Finland contain clearly more dead wood than other mires where the present total volume rises up to 9.0 m3/ha. On the other hand, protected mires in southern Finland contain only 40% more dead wood than their non-protected counterparts.

Dead wood volumes have been measured in the NFI since the ninth inventory round, which begun in 1996. According to this short time series that covers a time span of approximately nine years (1998-2006) in southern and six years (2001-2006) in northern Finland dead wood volumes have increased by approximately 10-15% in non-protected mires in both parts of the country.

Importance of dead wood