When forested ecosystems are not disturbed for thousands of years, they undergo a decline in biomass and soil processes as a result of increasing nutrient (notably phosphorous) limitation. Our research has focused on understanding the community and ecosystem consequences of retrogression for chronosequences spanning boreal, temperate and subtropical regions.

Fire is the main disturbance agent in boreal forest, and our work investigates fire effects on forest composition and processes. This includes studying the ecological impacts of charcoal, and shows that charcoal promotes loss of native soil organic matter. This finding calls into question the supposed benefits of using charcoal (or 'biochar') for promoting carbon sequestration in soils (further info about this issue here).

Much of our work is carried out in the forests and shrublands in New Zealand. This includes studies on litter decomposition, succession on landslides and riverbeds, and comparisons of native and invasive plant species. Much of this work is done in collaboration with colleagues at Landcare Research in New Zealand.

We are investigating how aboveground and belowground communities respond to
various environmental stresses in experimental plots that have been running since 1986 in northern Sweden near Arvidsjaur. This includes understanding how ecological stresses affect the belowground community through promoting domination by slow-growing ericaceous dwarf shrubs at the expense of fast-growing graminoid species.

Studies are underway along an elevational gradient in subarctic tundra near Abisko in northern Sweden subarctic, to determine the relative importance of phosphorous and nitrogen limitation for plant and soil communities. This work is being done in collaboration with colleagues at the Climate Impact Research Centre (CIRC) at the Abisko field station.

There is much interest in how species loss affects ecosystems; most studies addressing this use randomly assembled communities of differing diversity but this does not reflect how species are lost in real situations. We maintain long term ‘removal experiments' (some running since 1996) in northern Sweden to understand how losses of plant species and functional groups affect community and ecosystem processes

Studies are focused on effects of invasive herbivores (e.g., deer), and predators (e.g., ship-rats) on aboveground and belowground processes. The rats and seabird project (RASP) studies the indirect ecological impacts of predation of nesting seabirds by invasive rats on forested offshore islands in northern New Zealand. This is a collaborative venture with researchers in New Zealand and Alaska.

Some boreal forest plant species have very high foliar concentrations of condensed tannins that actively precipitate proteins, resulting in low mineralization rates and large amounts of occluded organic nitrogen. Current research focuses on preferential uptake of complexed organic nitrogen by boreal species and the importance of this for community-level feedbacks.

In June every two years (odd-numbered years) we run an internationally focused course for PhD students on Boreal Forest Ecology. This course is limited to 25 students, and a call for applications is normally made in the previous November. Enquiries can be directed to Michael Gundale