2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference

March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH

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5/23/2019 | 11:00 AM - 11:15 AM | CUTTING EDGE: CONTEMPORARY PRACTICES OF RIPARIAN BUFFER MANAGEMENT AROUND HEADWATERS IN CANADA, FINLAND AND SWEDEN | 151 DEF

CUTTING EDGE: CONTEMPORARY PRACTICES OF RIPARIAN BUFFER MANAGEMENT AROUND HEADWATERS IN CANADA, FINLAND AND SWEDEN

Forested riparian buffers are commonly used to mitigate negative effects of forest harvesting on recipient freshwater ecosystems. Most of the best practices of riparian buffer retention aim at larger streams while headwaters are often compromised. We surveyed >300 small streams flowing through recent clearcuts in three timber-producing countries – Canada, Finland and Sweden. We found that the three countries differed in how both policy and practice consider riparian buffers. British Columbia (Canada) does not require any buffer reserves on the smallest streams and thus 45% of the surveyed stream in BC had no buffers at all. Average buffer width of the rest of the streams was 16 m. Finland had buffers allocated to most of the surveyed streams, with average buffer width of 15.3 m. Buffers were on average 4.04 m wide along Swedish headwaters but 70% of these streams had buffers below this average. We found that buffer width somewhat increased with stream size and slope of the riparian area. In addition, most of the surveyed streams had marks of other impairments associated with forestry operations (e.g., machine tracks, ditching) which poses an additional threat to the freshwater environment.

Riparian
Assessment
Landuse

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Presenters/Authors

Lenka Kuglerová (), Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, lenka.kuglerova@slu.se;