Professor Björn Lindahl
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
"An ectomycorrhizal species index to assess forest continuity"
Long absence of stand replacing disturbance is a common criterion for natural values in forests, but documentation is often scarce when going back in time. Biological indicators that can be used today to assess continuity are therefore important tools when deciding conservation priorities, and DNA-based analyses of soil fungi provide new possibilities. Here we used sequencing data on ectomycorrhizal fungi from the Swedish Forest Soil Inventory to formulate a species index of forest continuity. Many of the indicators of old forests belonged to the genera Cortinarius and Russula, whereas Thelephora terrestris, Hyaloscypha finlandica, Cenococcum geophilum and several species in the Atheliacea family indicated more recent disturbance. We tested the applicability of the index in three studies of northern Swedish pine forests with different time perspectives; a tree retention experiment harvested 12 years ago, a set of 60 years old clear cuts compared with similar forests with long continuity, and a fire chronosequence stretching across 300 years.
Research Professor Taina Pennanen
LUKE, Finland
"Intraspecific variation in the growth rate of Norway spruce and its interaction with the environment - profiling of seedlings from top to toe"
The presentation deals with our investigations on the spruce seedlings and clones belonging to families representing two contrasting growth phenotypes that have shown fast and slow growth rates in long-term experiments; aboveground traits, soil exploring patterns and capacity of abiotic and biotic soil variation to generate shifts in genotypic performance. We examined the potential of belowground soil factors to bring about genotype × environment interactions in a tree species by combining data from long-term field trials as well as seedling- and clone-based progeny experiments.