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Fig. 1. The map of Vodlozero National Park and its location in the eastern Fennoscandia. The larger map shows the location of study villages and other settlements in the NP and its vicinity. The study villages were 1. Kalgatshiga, 2. Korkala, 3. Luza, 4. Kalakunda, 5. Zagorije and 6. Gumarnavolok. The study forest compartments (kvartals) indicate the location and area of sectors of the landscape, whose stand characteristics were analyzed in detail. The zone of 0 to 5 km from villages is shown with dark gray shading. The vegetation zones are according to Ahti et al. (1969).

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Fig. 2. Proportions of different vegetation types from the total land area in different distance zones from the village centres.

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Fig. 3. Estimated marginal means of forest age in different distance zones of three dominant forest types; A) Mesic heath forests of Vaccinium type, B) Spruce bogs of Polytrichium type and C) Pine bogs of Carex Sphagnum type (solid circles). The village specific values (grey crosses) show the variation in the data. Results of GLMM are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Results of generalized linear mixed model analyses testing the effect of distance zone on the age of forests around the villages for the three most abundant growth site types and on the volume of growing stock, proportion of birch and proportion of spruce in mesic heath forests.
Landscape property df F P
Age of mesic heath forests 5,30 25.728 < 0.001
Age of Polytrichium spruce bogs 5,22 2.697 0.048
Age of Carex Sphagnum pine bogs 5,24 3.080 0.028
Volume of standing stock in mesic heath forests 5,30 3.856 0.008
Proportion of birch in mesic heath forests 5,30 14.348 < 0.001
Proportion of spruce in mesic heath forests 5,30 5.628 0.001
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Fig. 4. Estimated marginal means of A) volume of stems, B) proportion of birch and C) proportion of spruce in mesic heath forests of different distance zones (solid circles). The village specific values (grey crosses) show the variation in the data. Results of GLMM are presented in Table 1.

Table 2. The size of human population, number of households and average age of forests surrounding the villages, according to the 1905 census (Blagoveshchenski 1907; Golubtsov 1907). Age of forests (Myrtillus-type only) is based on estimated marginal means of the GLM analysis (see Table 1). Results of one tailed non-parametric correlation test are given in the last line.
  Village Houses Population Age of forest
1 Kalgazhiga 94 671 127
2 Korkala 22 212 140
3 Luza 42 249 142
4 Kalakunda 10 70 211
5 Zagorie 23 128 129
6 Gumarnavolok 16 115 160
  rs Age vs. –0.829* –0.771*  
* Indicates significance of correlation at level of P < 0.05 (1-tailed)
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Fig. 5. Nonlinear regression curves for A) stand age and B) proportion of spruce from the standing stock in mesic heath forest in relationship to the distance from the nearest village in the northern part of the Vodlozero NP. The equations of curves and the results of regression analyses are shown in Table 4.

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Fig. 6. The maps showing A) age and B) proportion of spruce in mesic heath forests of the northern part of the Vodlozero NP. The results are based on spatial interpolation (see Methods for details). The locations of old villages are shown with gray squares. Rivers and lakes are shown with white color.

Table 3. Relationship of distance from the nearest village and stand parameters in the whole northern part of the Vodlozero NP (results of the regression analyses). Proportion of birch was not analyzed due to strong skewness of the data distribution even after arcsin-square root transformation.
Distance vs. Linear Nonlinear
P r2 Equation P r2
Age < 0.0001 0.052 e1 < 0.0001 0.099
Volume 0.0832 - - - -
Proportion of spruce < 0.0001 0.099 e2 < 0.0001 0.115