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Classification of boreal mires in Finland and Scandinavia: A review

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Classification and Inventory of the World’s Wetlands

Part of the book series: Advances in Vegetation Science ((AIVS,volume 16))

Abstract

Mires have been classified in northern Europe at two levels: (1) mire complexes are viewed as large landscape units with common features in hydrology, peat stratigraphy and general arrangement of surface patterns and of minerogenous vs. ombrogenous site conditions; (2) mire sites are considered as units of vegetation research and used in surveys for forestry and conservation. This paper reviews the development of site type classifications in Fennoscandia (Finland, Sweden, Norway), with a discussion on circumboreal classification and corresponding mire vegetation types in Canada. The scale of observation affects classifications: small plot size (0.25–1 m2) has been used in Scandinavia to make detailed analyses of ecological and microtopographical variation in mostly treeless mire ecosystems, while larger sampling areas (up to 100–400 m2) have been commonly employed in Finnish studies of forested peatlands. Besides conventional hierarchic classifications, boreal mires have been viewed as an open, multidimensional, non-hierarchic system which can be described and classified with factor, principal component or correspondence analyses. Fuzzy clustering is suggested as an alternative method of classification in mire studies where only selected environmental and vegetational parameters are measured or estimated.

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  1. Department of Ecology and Systematics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 4, Fabianink. 24, FIN-00014, Helsinki, Finland

    P. Pakarinen

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C. Max Finlayson A. G. van der Valk

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Pakarinen, P. (1995). Classification of boreal mires in Finland and Scandinavia: A review. In: Finlayson, C.M., van der Valk, A.G. (eds) Classification and Inventory of the World’s Wetlands. Advances in Vegetation Science, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0427-2_4

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