Archive for the ‘boreal forest’ Tag

If you give a moss a forestry rotation

As I mentioned in my previous post, mosses are very sensitive to changes in microclimate. Forestry practices can, therefore, have a big impact on moss diversity and persistence in any one location. Over the last few years we’ve gotten a better sense of the scale at which those management decisions affect local mosses. Researchers in […]

Keeping the boreal forest in tune

As you’ve seen in my previous posts, there are some big issues facing boreal forests and the birds that live there both as summer migrants and year-round. These issues include habitat loss and fragmentation, as well as the impacts of climate change. Some researchers have suggested that we need to protect large areas of important […]

A swiftly changing forest

In my last post, I talked about the impacts of forest loss and fragmentation on boreal birds. These issues impact birds whether they are year-round residents or summer visitors, and the impacts can be pretty intense- Sauer et al. (2005) estimated that the boreal chickadee population experienced an annual decline of about 3.6% between 1966 […]

If a tree falls in the boreal forest, do the birds pay attention?

When we think of boreal forests, we may think of dense networks of coniferous trees covering the landscape, but the reality is a bit more complicated than that- in addition to deciduous trees in the understory and canopy and bodies of water of all shapes and sizes, boreal forests are mosaics with patches of different […]

What flies in a northern forest?

In July I had the opportunity to attend the North American Congress on Conservation Biology in Madison, Wisconsin. In addition to having a blast in the cooler weather and meeting researchers doing amazing work, I also was reminded that the boreal forests of the world are huge- in fact, they are much, much bigger than […]