Paleolimnological assessment of the impact of logging on small boreal lakes

In Finland a great number of forest lakes are affected by silvicultural practices such as logging. Logging affects water chemistry and thus the ecological state of lakes by causing nutrient loads and increasing erosion and humic substances in water. Water quality assessment requires definition of natural background conditions and ecological status of water bodies. Therefore it is necessary to determine the impact of these practices on aquatic organisms. In the absence of long-term monitoring data, paleolimnological methods provide a powerful tool for determining human-induced changes in lakes. In this study diatom assemblages, diatom-inferred water total phosphorus and total organic carbon, and sediment chemistry were analyzed from the sediments of six lakes with a logged catchment area (11–53%). According to one-way analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) the diatom communities of three lakes were different before, immediately after and more than 10 years after logging and diatom assemblages in remaining three lakes did not show statistically significant differences between these times. However, all changes were minor, and at present the diatom assemblages and diatom-inferred water chemistry of all the lakes are close to the pre-logging conditions. The minor alterations are probably due to the wide protective zones around the lakes.