Some boreal forest species fail to recover even 100 years after clearcutting

…Recovery depends on forest type

The first of its kind to examine such an extended timeline for recovery and a wide range of biotic groups in boreal forests after clear-cutting, the study analyzed 190 data sets across North America, Europe and Russia. The research looked at the biodiversity of communities within different forest types, including broadleaf trees like aspen or birch, coniferous trees like spruce or pine, and a mix of the two types.

In about half the cases studied, the biodiversity of the forest communities returned to pre-logged levels in less than 30 years, particularly in faster-growing broadleaf forests, where vascular plants and mosses either weren’t affected at all or recovered within 12 to 25 years.

But in mixed and coniferous forests, recovery was much slower, taking more than 55 years for small mammals such as mice and voles, 85 years for flowering plants, 95 years for lichens, and more than 100 years for mosses and liverworts. And beetles dependent on deadwood for survival showed no signs of recovery at all within the 16 to 29 years of existing data available for review.

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