Fire Ecology in Sweden and Future Use of Fire for Maintaining Biodiversity

Abstract

Except for the southernmost part and the high mountains in the northwest, Sweden lies in the boreal and hemiboreal (Ahti et al. 1968) zones. Although the country spans nearly 1500 km from North to South, mature forest vegetation is surprisingly similar, especially on poor to medium rich soils: ericaceous dwarf shrubs often dominate in the field layer, above a mat of pleurocarpous mosses. There are two dominant conifers, and a handful of boreal broadleaved tree species. In the hemiboreal zone several temperate broadleaved tree species occur too, but they usually constitute only a small fraction of the stands.KeywordsSeed BankFire HistoryCrown FireFire Return IntervalFire EcologyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.