We studied the vegetation cover of 60-year-old military sites in the subarctic mountain area in northwestern Finnish Lapland, comparing the vegetation of observation posts in the barren mountain and camps in the mountain birch zone to the undisturbed control sites. These kinds of old disturbance areas give us valuable information about resilience and recovery of vegetation in a fragile subarctic environment and allow us to follow up and predict changes under changing climate.

Vegetation of the disturbed sites had not recovered to the initial condition in 60 years; the recovery was slower in the mountain birch zone where the intensity of disturbance had been higher. The coverage of dwarf shrubs, especially Empetrum hermafroditum and Vaccinium myrtillus, was lower at the military sites as compared to the controls; instead, increased coverage of some graminoids was observed in the observation posts and the transition zones of camps. At the most disturbed patches, cryptogams were still prevailing. The results confirm the observations of earlier studies that rather than ecological recovery, the long-term development of vegetation in disturbance areas in high latitudes shows a shift to functionally different plant communities.