Natural disturbance and structure in two primary boreal forests of Western Newfoundland ...

• Main Author: McCarthy, John William Thomas
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2009
• Subjects: Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0075084; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0075084

It was long assumed that small-scale gap disturbance did not figure predominantly in boreal forests. Attention has focused, instead, on the role of stand-replacing fire and insect outbreaks in structuring the boreal forest landscape. Recent work, however, beginning principally in Scandinavian boreal forests, has highlighted the primary role of small-scale canopy gap disturbance in old-growth boreal forests. To examine the role of gap dynamics in boreal forests of western Newfoundland, two primary forest landscapes were compared: (1) a 225 km² Main River study area located at the southern base o f the Great Northern Peninsula, and (2) a 106 km² Little Grand Lake study area in western Newfoundland, Canada. It was hypothesized that the size and age structure, on both the stand- and landscape-level, were determined by distinctly different disturbance regimes, namely, fungal-mediated gap dynamics in the Main River forests and insect-mediated patch dynamics in the Little Grand Lake forests. The contrast between ...