Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Forest experiments serve a crucial role in understanding how forest ecosystems are affected by forest management and environmental change. In Sweden, experiments in the boreal forest region have been conducted and recorded since the early 1900s. Previous studies from other biomes have shown that experiments, and citations to papers based on these experiments, can have biogeographic biases where research findings can generate unproportionally large impact relative to the land area it represents. In this study the biogeoclimatic conditions, geographic distribution and citation impact of Swedish forest experiments was assessed. The geographical distribution of forest experiments was extracted from a national database (Silvaboreal). Citation production from peer-reviewed literature was investigated for a subset of experiments with a focus on thinning- and biodiversity. The results showed that the distribution of all experiments was largely representative for the Swedish climate, but that experiments on low forest production sites (peatlands and the alpine zone) was rare (<2%) as well as in deciduous forests (<3%). The geographic distribution of forest experiments was also concentrated around regions with key infrastructure (research stations). In total 429 articles associated with the thinning experiments were found and 4 articles associated with the biodiversity experiments. Citations from thinning-fertilization trials was found to be overrepresented in the results with a disproportionate number of citations generated between 64-65˚of latitude. I conclude that biogeographic biases within Swedish forest research are small in comparison to that outlined previously for other regions.