The Sävar Rising Coastline Mire Chronosequence (SMC) is a study area in the Swedish province of Västerbotten in the Bothnian Bay Lowlands (BBL), located ~ 20 km northeast of the town Umeå. The young boreal landscape is characterized by post-glacial isostatic rebound, today at a rate of ~ 9 mm per year. Since the onset of the last deglaciation, new land areas have continuously been exposed from the sea, constantly offering new locales suitable for primary mire formation. As a result, a natural mire chronosequence has formed between the present coastline (0 years BP) and the highest coastline (~ 10 000 years BP), with increasing mire ages the further inland from the present coast the mire is found. The strong age gradient implies similar present climatic conditions across the area and provides a unique opportunity to study mire succession at the landscape level.

In the interactive map, field photos from two separate transects in the Sävar Rising Coastline Mire Chronosequence (SMC) are included. The mires are searchable using their unique IDs. From the legend box, the background map can be set to street, topographic, terrain or satellite view. When you click on a mire shape, a landscape photo along with mire geographical properties are displayed and when you click on a point a vegetation photo is displayed along with sampling point data.

In 57 chronosequence mires, edge-to-edge sampling transects have been applied (red points in the map). Between one and four sampling transects, with five sampling points each, are used to cover within-mire variation in peat properties. In total 400 sampling points were distributed across the 57 mires, and visited during July and August 2018. In the vegetation photos, a 50 x 50 cm frame is used. ...

In 15 chronosequence mires (marked with blue triangles), relative and absolute groundwater levels have been continuously monitored for two years (2021-2023). The groundwater monitored mires have been used in several studies describing among others mercury dynamics (Hu et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2023, 2021, 2020) and plant succession (Laine et al., 2021).

See the Publications page for a list of studies from the mire chronosequence.