Abstract
BackgroundRiparian forests surrounding streams host high biodiversity values, but are threatened by clear-cut logging. Narrow buffer strips of about 15 m are commonly left between the stream and the clear-cut, but studies suggest that the buffer width should be at least 30 m to protect riparian plant communities. Moreover, selective logging is often allowed on the buffer strips in order to increase economic gain. We used an experiment of 43 riparian sites where buffer strip width and selective logging within the strip were manipulated and supplemented with unlogged control sites. We report the short-term changes in the community composition of vascular plants and mosses near the stream (0–15 m distance).Results15-meter buffers are not enough to protect the vascular plant communities from changes caused by a clear-cut irrespective of the selective logging on the buffer strip. For moss communities 15-m buffers were not enough if they were selectively logged. Relative to the control sites, we observed no significant changes in community composition of vascular plants or mosses in the sites with 30-m buffer strips, whether selectively logged or not.ConclusionsWe conclude that buffer strips of 15 m are not sufficient to protect streamside plant communities even in the short term, but that buffers of 30 m should be left on both sides of the stream. Selective logging appears not to have effects on buffers that are at least 30 m wide. Thus, it may be more reasonable to increase buffer width and to allow selective logging on the wider buffer in order to compensate for the economic losses than to leave all trees on a narrow and ecologically insufficient buffer.
Highlights
Riparian forests surrounding streams host high biodiversity values, but are threatened by clear-cut logging
We found a total of 102 vascular plant species, including one nearly threatened species, Carex disperma (Additional file 1: Table S2), and 90 moss species, including the nearly threatened Plagiothecium latebricola and the vulnerable Plagiomnium drummondii (Additional file 1: Table S3)
Moss community composition changed more on the 15-m buffer strips with selective logging than on controls, while the other three logging treatments did not result in any more change than what was observed on the control sites (Table 1, Fig. 3b)
Summary
Riparian forests surrounding streams host high biodiversity values, but are threatened by clear-cut logging. Narrow buffer strips of about 15 m are commonly left between the stream and the clear-cut, but studies suggest that the buffer width should be at least 30 m to protect riparian plant communities. In the mid1990’s the Fennoscandian and Baltic countries adopted new forestry measures that aim to integrate biodiversity concerns into production forestry [4, 5]. Among these measures is the conservation of woodland key habitats (WKHs) that are small habitat patches with high conservation value. Since WKHs are small patches [7, 8], they are very vulnerable to negative edge effects from the surrounding clear-cuts [9,10,11,12]
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