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Forestry Operations in the Canadian Subarctic: an Ecological Argument Against Clear-cutting*†

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Don Gill
Don Gill
Affiliation:
Director, Boreal Institute for Northern Studies, and Associate Professor of Geography, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
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Extract

Environmental and floristic evidence is presented to show that, after removal of the White Spruce (Picea glauca) and willow-alder (Salix spp.–Alnus crispa) canopies from exposed sites within the boreal woodland of the Mackenzie River Delta, Northwest Territories, Canada, environmental degradation is such that secondary succession of low-arctic tundra heath, mosses, and lichens, takes place. The extreme exposure of cleared sites enables a hardy group of tundra plants to compete with the local flora and invade the previously forested location.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , Summer 1974 , pp. 87 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1974

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