Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Forest Management
Improving Aboveground Biomass Estimates with 3D Tree Crown Parameters from UAV-LS in Beech Forests
Published: 2024-12-18
Subjects: Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Accurate estimates of aboveground biomass (AGB) are essential for forest policies to reduce carbon emissions. Unmanned aerial laser scanning (UAV-LS) offers unprecedented millimetric detail but is underutilized in monitoring broadleaf Mediterranean forests compared to coniferous ones. This study aims to design and evaluate a procedure for AGB estimates based on the predictive power of crown [...]
Comparing two ground-based seed count methods and their effect on masting metrics
Published: 2024-10-02
Subjects: Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Plant Biology
Masting, i.e. interannually variable and synchronized seed production, plays a crucial role in forest ecosystems, influencing wildlife dynamics, pathogen prevalence, and forest regeneration. Accurately capturing masting variability is important for effective forest management, conservation efforts, and predicting ecosystem responses to environmental changes. The adoption of low-cost methods [...]
Quantifying life-history trade-offs in diameter growth for tropical tree species from a large urban inventory dataset
Published: 2024-06-11
Subjects: Forest Biology, Forest Management, Horticulture, Integrative Biology, Plant Biology, Population Biology
Trees are important ecosystem service providers that improve the physical environment and human experience in cities throughout the world. Since the ecosystem services and maintenance requirements of urban trees change as they grow in time, predictive models of tree growth rates are useful to forecast societal benefits and maintenance costs over a tree’s lifetime. However, many models to date are [...]
The role of deadwood in the carbon cycle: Implications for models, forest management, and future climates
Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Deadwood represents a significant carbon pool in forests and savannas. Although previous research has focused mainly on forests, we synthesise deadwood studies across all ecosystems with woody vegetation. Storage and release of carbon from deadwood is controlled by interacting decomposition drivers including biotic consumers (animals, microbes) and abiotic factors (water, fire, sunlight, [...]
Leveraging surf breaks to expand conservation of carbon-dense coastal ecosystems
Published: 2023-10-24
Subjects: Forest Management, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Surf breaks are increasingly recognized as socio-environmental phenomena that provide opportunities for biodiversity conservation and sustained benefits for local communities. Here, we examine an additional benefit from conserving surf breaks—their coincidence with carbon dense coastal ecosystems. Using global spatial datasets of irrecoverable carbon (defined as carbon stocks that, if lost today, [...]
Amount of carbon fixed, transit time and fate of harvested wood products define the climate change mitigation potential of boreal forest management - A model analysis
Published: 2023-10-15
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Boreal forests are often managed to maximize wood production, but other goals, among which climate change mitigation, are increasingly important. Examining synergies and trade-offs between forest production and its potential for carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation in forest stands requires explicitly accounting for how long forest ecosystems and wood products retain carbon from [...]
A probabilistic approach to estimating timber harvest location
Published: 2023-02-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biostatistics, Forest Management, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Determining the harvest location of timber is crucial to enforcing international regulations designed to protect natural resources and to tackle illegal logging and associated trade in forest products. Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis (SIRA) can be used to verify claims of timber harvest location by matching levels of naturally-occurring stable isotopes within wood tissue to location-specific ratios [...]
Assessing the impact of deer on young trees in a Sugi (Cryptomeria japonica) plantation based on field signs
Published: 2022-06-14
Subjects: Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Predicting the level of damage caused by deer browsing in young plantations is important for selecting appropriate damage control measures. In this study, we examined a method for assessing the level of deer damage in young Sugi (Cryptomeria japonica) plantations by observing field signs of deer. First, a questionnaire survey was conducted to obtain information about the damage caused by deer [...]
A Systematic Map of Research Exploring the Ecological Modifiers and Consequences of Bark Damaging Behaviour in Squirrel Species
Published: 2022-05-17
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Zoology
Bark-stripping and browsing by mammals in woodlands can cause widespread damage to trees, inhibiting tree growth and leading to whole tree or canopy death. Sciurid species worldwide are known to incorporate inner bark or cambium tissue into their diets, and outer bark can additionally be used as nesting material. The drivers and causes of bark-stripping behaviour have been investigated and [...]
The Global Forest Health Crisis: A Public Good Social Dilemma in Need of International Collective Action
Published: 2022-03-11
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Behavioral Economics, Biodiversity, Biology, Biosecurity, Botany, Economics, Entomology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Studies, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, International Relations, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Pathogenic Microbiology, Plant Biology, Plant Pathology, Plant Sciences, Political Science, Science and Technology Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Society is confronted by interconnected threats to ecological sustainability. Among these is the devastation of forests by destructive non-native pathogens and insects introduced through global trade, leading to the loss of critical ecosystem services and a global forest health crisis. We argue that the forest health crisis is a public good social dilemma and propose a response framework that [...]
Aboveground carbon stocks in Madagascar’s vanilla production landscape – exploring rehabilitation through agroforestry in the light of land-use history
Published: 2021-06-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Forests and tree-dominated land uses store large amounts of carbon stocks in plant biomass. However, anthropogenic changes in land use and land cover decrease tree cover and associated carbon stocks. Agroforestry has the potential to maintain or restore carbon in plant biomass but the amount will be influenced by various factors that may include land-use history and management practices. However, [...]
A 25-years population dynamics of sika deer in Kyushu Island, Japan: Estimation using vector autoregressive spatiotemporal model and evaluation of a large-scale management
Published: 2021-02-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Population Biology
Regional management of large herbivore populations is known to be effective in reducing local economic damages and conserving local endemic plants. However, herbivores often move across management areas, and the effect of population management on a large spatial scale is poorly understood, even though it is necessary to use a large-scale approach across multiple management units to implement [...]
Hardwood content impacts the parasitoid community associated with Eastern spruce budworm (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae)
Published: 2021-01-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
A major pest of eastern North American forests is spruce budworm, Choristoneura fumiferana Clemens (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), which outbreaks every 30–40 years and causes large scale tree mortality. Researchers have established that hardwood content reduces the defoliation and mortality of balsam fir and spruces during spruce budworm outbreaks. One mechanism posited to explain these patterns is [...]
Do forest fuel reduction treatments confer resistance to beetle infestation and drought mortality?
Published: 2020-08-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Climate change is amplifying the frequency and severity of droughts and wildfires in many forests. In the western U.S., fuels reduction treatments, both mechanical and prescribed fire, are widely used to increase resilience to wildfire but their effect on resistance to drought and beetle mortality is not as well understood. We followed more than 10,000 mapped and tagged trees in a mixed-conifer [...]
Re-evaluating “Conservation Implications of Native American Impacts”
Published: 2020-02-12
Subjects: Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Commentary On: Oswald, W. W., Foster, D. R., Shuman, B. N., Chilton, E. S., Doucette, D. L., Duranleau, D. L. Conservation implications of limited Native American impacts in pre-contact New England. Nature Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0466-0