Old Juniper Troll stand - The oldest shrub population from Scandinavia

Jiří Lehejček, Matěj Roman, Martin Lexa, Paul Eric Aspholm and Jiří Mašek
Additional contact information
Jiří Lehejček: Department of Environmental Security, Faculty of Logistics and Crisis Management, Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Uherské Hradiště, Czech Republic
Matěj Roman: Centre for Glaciology, Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom
Martin Lexa: Department of Wood Processing and Biomaterials, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
Paul Eric Aspholm: NIBIO - Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, Svanvik, Norway
Jiří Mašek: Department of Physical Geography and Geoecology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

Journal of Forest Science, 2024, vol. 70, issue 4, 176-184

Abstract: Old plant communities are of utmost importance for nature conservation, carbon sequestration, as well as gene pool maintenance. Shrub populations occurring in extreme environments beyond abiotic tree-lines provide diverse ecosystem services and have potential as proxy archives because they often inhabit areas with scarce and short instrumental records. We provide dendrochronological insight into one such population made up of prostrate Juniperus communis shrubs in the northern Scandinavian tundra (Norway), growing on a competition-free boulder field. We dated and provided a growth chronology of the oldest living shrub population (190 ± 148 years) from Scandinavia with the oldest individual being 683 years old. This is a conservative estimate, as shrubs in extreme environments do not form even a single row of cells in some years. The cross-dating issues of poorly growing shrubs do not fully allow to rely on climate sensitivity of the juniper population studied, although the species' potential for dendroclimatological reconstructions is generally considered high, also because the common juniper is an abundant woody species distributed globally. Old populations present an important gene source in plant recruitment, particularly in the context of the present environmental change.

Keywords: abiotic tree-line; dendrochronology; Juniperus communis; longevity; Sø; r-Varanger; wood anatomy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://jfs.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/118/2023-JFS.html (text/html)
http://jfs.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/118/2023-JFS.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:caa:jnljfs:v:70:y:2024:i:4:id:118-2023-jfs

DOI: 10.17221/118/2023-JFS

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Forest Science is currently edited by Mgr. Ilona Procházková

More articles in Journal of Forest Science from Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().