Root-Soil Plate Characteristics of Silver Birch on Wet and Dry Mineral Soils in Latvia

Abstract

Climate change manifests itself as a change in the probability of extreme weather events, and it is projected that windstorms will become more frequent and intense in Northern Europe. Additionally, the frequency and length of warm periods with wet, unfrozen soil in winter will rise in this region. These factors will lead to an increased risk of storm damages in forests. Factors affecting trees’ resistance to wind uprooting have been well quantified for some species but not for a common and economically important tree, the silver birch (Betula pendula Roth.). Therefore, this study aimed to assess the root-soil plate characteristics of silver birch on wet and dry mineral soils in hemiboreal forests. The root-soil plate and aboveground parameters were measured for 56 canopy trees uprooted in destructive, static-pulling experiments. The shape of the root-soil plate corresponds to the elliptic paraboloid. A decreasing yet slightly different trend was observed in root depth distribution with increasing distance from the stem in both soils. The main factors determining root-soil plate volume were width, which was notably larger on wet mineral soils, and tree diameter at breast height. Consequently, the root-soil plate volume was significantly larger for trees growing on wet mineral soils than for trees growing on dry soils, indicating a wind adaptation.

The Destructive Static Tree-Pulling Test Provides Reliable Estimates of the Soil–Root Plate of Eastern Baltic Silver Birch (Betula pendula Roth.)

“…Silver birch is reported to have a high adaptability of soil–root plate to diverse soil conditions [ 16 , 29 , 30 ], for instance, plastically increasing leverage and rooting depth on loose soils [ 22 , 24 ]. Accordingly, soil type (freely draining mineral, drained deep peat, and waterlogged mineral) had a significant ( p < 0.001) effect on the soil–root plate volume and surface radii (width) for both static tree-pulling and windthrow trees ( Figure 1 ; Table 1 and Table 2 ).…”

Post fire ground vegetation development over 25 years

“…Frequency of fires has increased as a result of global warming (Flannigan et al, 2006). Habitat recover after fire disturbance differs from that of any other severe disturbance (Wang & Kemball, 2005) due to influence to recovery of trees as defining element of forest ecosystem (Mara Kitenberga et al, 2020), as well as effect on organic matter and thus disruption of nutrient supply differing from any other severe humaninduced or natural disturbance (Čakšs et al, 2018;Jansons et al, 2016;Samariks et al, 2020Samariks et al, , 2021. The development of burned biotope depends on how quickly the fire is extinguished and what is done with the stand after the fire, for example, whether salvage logging is carried out or left for natural regeneration (Kārkliņa et al, 2020).…”

Winter frost damage and its link to early growth and survival in a poplar clone collection

“…Species and hybrids of the Populus genus are shown to be among the most promising fast-growing tree species in the boreal and hemiboreal region (Rytter et al, 2013) with a mean annual increment of up to 20 m³ ha -1 year -1 in a rotation of 25 years (Rytter & Stener, 2014). Besides, the assessed species had demonstrated notable resistance to main damaging agent in Northern Europe -wind (Čakša et al, 2021;Samariks et al, 2020Samariks et al, , 2021. The plantation productivity primarily depends on the performance of selected genotypes.…”