Articles containing the keyword 'Cladonia'

Water extracts of six common soil lichens, Cladonia alpestris, C. rangiferina, C. arbuscula (sylvatica), C. pleurota, Cetraria islandica, Stereocaulon paschale, inhibited growth of ectomycorrhizae of Pinus sylvestris (L.). Of 17 fungi (12 mycorrhizal) tested, many were inhibited while others were scarcely influenced or even occasionally stimulated by the extracts. Cladonia alpestris extract inhibited most fungi while C. rangiferina showed much less influence.

In pure culture synthesis experiments, 32P uptake of Pinus sylvestris was significantly reduced by C. alpestris extract. Different species of fungi showed widely variant abilities to pick up 32 P. in nursery experiments, much more vigorous growth of P. sylvestris and Picea abies (L.) H. Karst. was obtained on plots without C. alpestris than on paired plots covered with it. Betula verrucosa (B. pendula Roth) showed no difference. Under natural forest conditions, P. sylvestris seedlings grow much more rapidly where C. alpestris had been eliminated by road building or reindeer grazing than do seedlings only one meter distant under undisturbed C. alpestris cover. It is suggested that by properly controlled reindeer grazing, establishment and early growth of P. sylvestris on Cladonia sites can be much enhanced. By the time that C. alpestris could become re-established the pine seedlings would have grown large enough to suffer little from reindeer grazing. This study shows the continuity of the major components of the forest tundra biome – the dependence of pines, mycorrhizae, lichens, and reindeer and their predators (human or otherwise) upon each other for a healthy existence.

The PDF includes a summary in Finnish.

• Brown, E-mail: rb@mm.unknown
• Mikola, E-mail: pm@mm.unknown

Lichens are sensitive to competition from vascular plants, intensive silviculture, pollution and reindeer and caribou grazing, and can therefore serve as indicators of environmental changes. Hyperspectral remote sensing data has been proved promising for estimation of plant diversity, but its potential for forest floor lichen cover estimation has not yet been studied. In this study, we investigated the use of hyperspectral data in estimating ground lichen cover in boreal forest stands in Finland. We acquired airborne and in situ hyperspectral data of lichen-covered forest plots, and applied multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis to estimate the fractional cover of ground lichens in these plots. Estimation of lichen cover based on in situ spectral data was very accurate (coefficient of determination (r²) 0.95, root mean square error (RMSE) 6.2). Estimation of lichen cover based on airborne data, on the other hand, was fairly good (r² 0.77, RMSE 11.7), but depended on the choice of spectral bands. When the hyperspectral data were resampled to the spectral resolution of Sentinel-2, slightly weaker results were obtained. Tree canopy cover near the flight plots was weakly related to the difference between estimated and measured lichen cover. The results also implied that the presence of dwarf shrubs could influence the lichen cover estimates.

• Kuusinen, Department of Built Environment, School of Engineering, Aalto University, P.O. Box 14100, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8063-1739 E-mail: nea.kuusinen@aalto.fi
• Hovi, Department of Built Environment, School of Engineering, Aalto University, P.O. Box 14100, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4384-5279 E-mail: aarne.hovi@aalto.fi
• Rautiainen, Department of Built Environment, School of Engineering, Aalto University, P.O. Box 14100, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6568-3258 E-mail: miina.a.rautiainen@aalto.fi