Environmental impacts of stump harvest on water quality, especially mercury

Last changed: 02 May 2022

The project 'Environmental impacts of stump harvest on water quality, especially mercury' started in 2012 and ended in 2015.

Earlier studies have shown that forestry can increase the aquatic burden of nutrients, particles, dissolved organic material and methyl mercury (MeHg) in fish, with the latter being particularly serious. There is considerably less information about the aquatic effects of stump harvesting, and many of FSC’s concerns with stump harvesting stem from this “aquatic knowledge gap”.

This project intended to improve the knowledge base for how stump harvest influences the flux of particles, organic carbon, N and MeHg in runoff waters. This was  accomplished with new empirical studies on sensitive, fine-grained soils that include continuation of an earlier study, and synthesis of the rapidly growing body of relevant international research. An additional goal was to advancing the expertise of a new researcher specialized in bioenergy’s aquatic effects.    

The project was financed by The Swedish Energy Agency (Energimyndigheten) and had a total budget of 2 MSEK.

Participating from the Department were Kevin Bishop and Karin Eklöf.