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Northern MiresBy HUGO SJORS, FOLKE B JORKBA C K and YNGVE NORDQVISTREGIONAL EcoLOGY OF MIRE SITES AND VEGETATIONBy Hugo SjorsI nt'roductionThere are large areas covered by mires in mostparts of Sweden, but the actual percentage of landunder peat, averaging about one sixth of the landarea, is extremely variable. About 13 % of the landarea is mire without productive forest. Althoughsome parts of South Sweden are above average inthis respect (see MALMER's "Southern mires") byfar the greatest areas of peatland are in the middleand northern parts of the country, i.e. in the Borealzone proper, or the northern con!ferous forestregion. Intense vegetartional investigations of thesevast mire areas have been comparatively few andnarrowly localized. The three classical works areMELIN's studies (1917) mainly in the upland ofAngermanland, MALMSTROM's work (1923) pioneeringas to habitat ecology, on the typically oligotrophicDegero stormyr in Vasterbotten, and Boo­BERG's monograph (1930) of a calcareous fen and"mixed mire" at Gisselas, Jamtland. Much later,the present author wrote about the southernmostpart of the area under consideration (SJ6Rs 1948a).There has been no attempt to cover the wholearea with a comparative study, as recently done inFinland (RuuHIJARVI 1960, HAVAS 1961, EuROLA1962). On the whole Swedish phyto-paludologistslag behind their colleagues on the eastern side ofthe Gulf of Bothnia. Thus, the study of works bythe latter, including classics like RANCKEN's (1912),CAJANDER's (1913), AuER's (1920) and KoTILAI­NEN's (1927, etc.) works, as well as many recentcontributions, is indispensable for anyone wishingto understand the ecology of North-Fennoscandianmires. There are obvious relations to Norwegianmires as well, but the types most eagerly studiedbotanically in Norway (see, e.g., OsvALD 1925 b,NoRDHAGEN 1928, 1943, E. DAHL 1956) are situatedin the oceanic or the mountainous parts andnot readily comparable to those of the wide undulatingor even nearly flat or plateau-like paludifiedtracts of the Swedish northern uplands. However,some vegetational work has been done on the miresof the Swedish Scandes, too (see A. PERSSON'scontribution).Scanty as is the work done, yet there exist aconsiderable number of smaller publications onvegetational conditions, most of which were quotedby the present author in an earlier paper (SJORS1950b). Particular attention is drawn here to DuRrETz's important work (1949a), although mainlybased on more southern material. Later papers include,e.g., Du RIETZ (1951 b) and SJ6Rs (1960a,1963d). Unfortunately, many of the studies in northernmire vegetation remain unpublished, however,but perhaps a period of renewed investigationis now in its cradle.Studies on nutritional ecology are few, but MALM­STROM (1923, 1935, 1950, 1952, 1964) has made basiccontributions in this field. Peat analyses from naturalsites still remain very few. Studies of mirewaters, apart from an early work including importantoxygen determinations by MALMSTROM (1923),have been carried out by WITTING (1949 and inSJ6Rs 1948a), SJ6Rs (1946, 1948a, 1952), A. PERSsoN(1962) and others.The peat stratigraphy is comparatively wellknown only for the southern parts (v. PosT 1930 b,GRANLUND 1932, G. LuNDQVIST 1951a, 1963 b, andseveral earlier contributions), and for a few scatteredmires farther north. It may suffice to refer toActa Phytogeogr. Suec. 50