Effects of Boreal Timber Rafting on the Composition of Arctic Driftwood

Abstract

Abstract:Wood from the boreal forest represents an important resource for paper production and sawmill processing. Due to poor infrastructure and high transportation costs on land, timbers are often transported over long distances along large river systems. Industrial river rafting activities started at the end of the 19th century and were intensified in western Russia and central Siberia from the 1920s to the 1980s. After initial single stem rafting, timber is today mostly floated in ship-guided rafts. Lost wood can be transported further to the Arctic Ocean, where it may drift within sea ice over several years and thousands of kilometers before being deposited along (sub-)Arctic coastlines. Here, we introduce dendro-dated tree-ring width series of 383 driftwood samples from logged timber that were collected along different driftwood-recipient coastlines in Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard. The majority of driftwood is Pinus sylvestris from the southern Yenisei region in central Siberia, whereas Larix sp. and Picea sp. from western Russia and eastern Siberia are rare. Although our results are based on a small sample collection, they clearly show the importance of timber rafting on species, age and origin of Arctic driftwood and indicate the immense loss of material during wood industrial river floating.

Short communication: Driftwood provides reliable chronological markers in Arctic coastal deposits

“…Once the driftwood has reached the ocean, it is often argued that the sea-ice-bound transport across the Arctic occurs within a few years and that free-floating wood sinks over a matter of months (Häggblom, 1982;Dyke et al, 1997;Bennike, 2004;Funder et al, 2011). A relatively rapid dispersal of driftwood is likewise supported by the results of Hellmann et al (2016a), who studied logging debris from the coasts of Svalbard, Greenland and Iceland by dendrochronological means. The authors showed that the age of the logs correlates well with a historically documented period of intensive forest use in western Siberia in the mid-20 th century.…”

The importance of Arctic driftwood for interdisciplinary global change research (Short Communication / Methodological note)

“…Sampling was mainly of old driftwood because the probability of successful cross-dating increases the greater the number of tree rings. Our new driftwood sampling sites from 2022 (red dots), together with the location of previous driftwood sampling sites (yellow dots), from which the age and origin of Arctic driftwood have been documented (Giddings 1940(Giddings , 1952Oswalt 1951, Stone 1958, Bartholin and Hjort 1987, Eggertsson 1993, 1994a, 1994bEggertsson and Laeyendecker 1995, Johansen 1998, 1999, 2001Nash 2000, Johansen and Hytteborn 2001, Hellmann et al 2013, 2016a, 2016bSteelandt et al 2015, Sander et al 2021, Shumilov et al 2020, Hole et al 2021, Linderholm et al 2021, Kolář et al 2022. The orange ovals refer to the main boreal source regions of Arctic driftwood along the Yenisei and Lena in central and eastern Siberia.…”

Short communication: Driftwood provides reliable chronological markers in Arctic coastal deposits

“…tem with a resolution of 0.001 mm (Velmex Inc., Bloomfield, NY, USA). The individual series were cross-dated against regional reference chronologies from northern Yakutia (Hellmann et al, 2016b) using TSAP-win (Rinntech, Heidelberg, Germany) and COFECHA (Version 6.02P). Wood anatomical sections were cut with a razor blade from transverse, radial, and tangential sections, mounted with water between two cover glasses, and analysed using an Olympus CX22LED microscope at 20-400× magnification.…”