Old forests are rich in diversity and house large numbers of plant, animal and insect species. Clear-cutting and ditching are common forestry practices in Scandinavia used to increase timber yield and production. This is done at a cost as there is often a turnover and a decrease in biodiversity as a result. Ditching reduces water levels, decreases the size of riparian zones and sometimes even dries out wetlands. Habitat change and disturbance affect the whole ecosystem, from small specialized micro-organisms to that of large grazers. The purpose of my study was to investigate the diversity of plants and mosses along a moisture gradient to identify if there is any pattern in diversity. Observations took place along the stream bank of Almarskogen, northeast of Karlstad in April, 2016. The gradient in the forest was divided into three separate categories ranging from moist soil, through an intermediate section to dry soil in the forest. A total of nine transects with three sample areas of two squaremeters each. An analysis of variance was calculated based on the effective number of species applied to Shannon-Wiener index (H´) for each sample plot. No significant difference was found, hence plant and mosses were analyzed separately, showing significance among the categories of vascularplants (P<0,05). The prediction; that the largest diversity will be found in the intermediate category was not supported by the data. For further analysis, Ellenbergs indicator values for moist was applied. No significance was shown, but the average Ellenberg value for the different species showed a pattern along a gradient from moist soils to slightly drier soils.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-46249 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Bryngelsson, Christine |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för hälsa, natur- och teknikvetenskap (from 2013) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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