Prescribed fire is an effective restoration measure for increasing boreal fungal diversity

Intensive forestry practices have had a negative impact on boreal forest biodiversity, subsequently, the need for restoration is pressing. Polypores (wood-inhabiting fungi) are key decomposers of dead-wood, but due to the lack of coarse woody debris (CWD) in forest ecosystems, many species are threatened. Here, we study the long-term effects on polypore diversity of two restoration treatments; creating CWD by felling whole trees and prescribed burning. This large-scale experiment is located in spruce-dominated boreal forests in southern Finland. The experiment has a factorial design (n=3) including three levels of created CWD (5, 30 and 60 m3 ha-1) crossed with burning or no burning. In 2018, 16 years after the initiation, we inventoried polypores on ten experimentally cut logs and ten naturally fallen logs per stand. We found that overall polypore community composition differed between burned and unburned stands. However, only red-listed species' abundances and richness were positively..., The data was collected on site in a field survey. Identified on site by researchers. ,