Birches’ (Betula sp.) ability to grow sprouts is low. The stump grows root collar and stump shoots, but the stump shoots are not proper stump shoots that will grow from the space between wood and bark. The buds are situated very low in the base, even under the ground. In this study, no actual root shoots could be found. Also the bushy alpine birches seem to be formed from stump and root collar shoots.
In Southern Finland silver birch (Betula pendula Roth) is more common than downy birch (Betula pubescens Ehrh.) in dry upland forest sites, while downy birch is common in fresh mineral soil forests and peatlands. In Northern Finland downy birch is the dominant birch species. Of the two species downy birch has markedly better capacity to form stump and root collar shoots both in Northern and Southern Finland. In general, birches grow sprouts much more strongly in Northern Finland.
Growth of the shoots is fastest during the first year after the felling of the parent tree and slows down gradually. The stump shoots may get separated from the stump when the stump decays, and the decay may also spread to the shoots. It is common that the shoots have no own roots, and die along with the stump. The shoots may have own root system or use roots of the parent tree that have stayed alive, in the latter case decay spreads almost always from the stump to the shoot. Whether the tree was felled with axe or saw had no effect on sprouting, probably because the sprouting buds are situated in the base of the tree. The larger stumps had usually fewer sprouts than smaller stumps. The fertility of the site seemed to have little effect on sprouting, but more moist sites formed more sprouts.
Forest regeneration using sprouts may be possible in peatlands for firewood production. on mineral soil sites birch does not suit for coppicing. The proportion of trees originating from sprouts decreases strongly by the time. Consequently, in Southern Finland sprouts have little effect on regeneration of birch. In Northern Finland sprouting is the most important way of regeneration.
The PDF includes a summary in German.
The pulse density of airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) is increasing due to technical developments. The trade-offs between pulse density, inventory costs, and forest attribute measurement accuracy are extensively studied, but the possibilities of high-density airborne LiDAR in stream extraction and soil wetness mapping are unknown. This study aimed to refine the best practices for generating a hydrologically conditioned digital elevation model (DEM) from an airborne LiDAR -derived 3D point cloud. Depressionless DEMs were processed using a stepwise breaching-filling method, and the performance of overland flow routing was studied in relation to a pulse density, an interpolation method, and a raster cell size. The study area was situated on a densely ditched forestry site in Parkano municipality, for which LiDAR data with a pulse density of 5 m–2 were available. Stream networks and a topographic wetness index (TWI) were derived from altogether 12 DEM versions. The topological database of Finland was used as a ground reference in comparison, in addition to 40 selected main flow routes within the catchment. The results show improved performance of overland flow modeling due to increased data density. In addition, commonly used triangulated irregular networks were clearly outperformed by universal kriging and inverse-distance weighting in DEM interpolation. However, the TWI proved to be more sensitive to pulse density than an interpolation method. Improved overland flow routing contributes to enhanced forest resource planning at detailed spatial scales.