Effects of Boreal Timber Rafting on the Composition of Arctic Driftwood

• Published in: Forests
• Main Authors: Lena Hellmann, Alexander Kirdyanov, Ulf Büntgen
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2016
• Subjects: Arctic driftwood; boreal rivers; timber logging; industrial floating; Siberia; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Svalbard; Greenland; Iceland; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/f7110257

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.