Articles

A 3D approach to reconstruct continuous optical images using lidar and MODIS

Monitoring forest health and biomass for changes over time in the global environment requires the provision of continuous satellite images. However, optical images of land surfaces are generally contaminated w...

Authors: HuaGuo Huang and Jun Lian

An integrated assessment approach to optimal forest bioenergy production for young Scots pine stands

Bioenergy is re-shaping opportunities and imperatives of forest management. This study demonstrates, through a case study in Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.), how forest bioenergy policies affect stand management...

Authors: Tianjian Cao, Kari Hyytiäinen, Henna Hurttala, Lauri Valsta and Jerome K. Vanclay

Sampling strategies for estimating forest cover from remote sensing-based two-stage inventories

Remote sensing-based inventories are essential in estimating forest cover in tropical and subtropical countries, where ground inventories cannot be performed periodically at a large scale owing to high costs a...

Authors: Piermaria Corona, Lorenzo Fattorini and Maria Chiara Pagliarella

Analysing the effect of stand density and site conditions on structure and growth of oak species using Nelder trials along an environmental gradient: experimental design, evaluation methods, and results

Most current approaches in forest science and practice require information about structure and growth of individual trees rather than - or in addition to - sum and mean values of growth and yield at forest sta...

Authors: Enno Uhl, Peter Biber, Matthias Ulbricht, Michael Heym, Tamás Horváth, Ferenc Lakatos, Janós Gál, Leonhard Steinacker, Giustino Tonon, Maurizio Ventura and Hans Pretzsch

Use of non-timber forest products from invasive alien Prosopis species (mesquite) and native trees in South Africa: implications for management

Prosopis species have been introduced to many areas outside their native range to provide benefits to local communities. Several Prosopis species and their hybrids (hereafter “mesquite”) have, ...

Authors: Ross T Shackleton, David C Le Maitre, Brian W van Wilgen and David M Richardson

Holocene variations of wildfire occurrence as a guide for sustainable management of the northeastern Canadian boreal forest

Cumulative impacts of wildfires and forest harvesting can cause shifts from closed-crown forest to open woodland in boreal ecosystems. To lower the probability of occurrence of such catastrophic regime shifts,...

Authors: Ahmed El-Guellab, Hugo Asselin, Sylvie Gauthier, Yves Bergeron and Adam A. Ali

Assessing risks and uncertainties in forest dynamics under different management scenarios and climate change

Forest management faces a climate induced shift in growth potential and increasing current and emerging new risks. Vulnerability analysis provides decision support based on projections of natural resources tak...

Authors: Matthias Albert, Jan Hansen, Jürgen Nagel, Matthias Schmidt and Hermann Spellmann

Comparison of carbon-stock changes, eddy-covariance carbon fluxes and model estimates in coastal Douglas-fir stands in British Columbia

The global network of eddy-covariance (EC) flux-towers has improved the understanding of the terrestrial carbon (C) cycle, however, the network has a relatively limited spatial extent compared to forest invent...

Authors: Colin J Ferster, JA (Tony) Trofymow, Nicholas C Coops, Baozhang Chen and Thomas Andrew Black

Inventory of aspen trees in spruce dominated stands in conservation area

The occurrence of aspen trees increases the conservation value of mature conifer dominated forests. Aspens typically occur as scattered individuals among major tree species, and therefore the inventory of aspe...

Authors: Matti Maltamo, Annukka Pesonen, Lauri Korhonen, Jari Kouki, Mikko Vehmas and Kalle Eerikäinen

Opinion: the use of natural hazard modeling for decision making under uncertainty

Decision making to mitigate the effects of natural hazards is a complex undertaking fraught with uncertainty. Models to describe risks associated with natural hazards have proliferated in recent years. Concurr...

Authors: David E Calkin and Mike Mentis

Estimating forest aboveground biomass by low density lidar data in mixed broad-leaved forests in the Italian Pre-Alps

Estimation of forest biomass on the regional and global scale is of great importance. Many studies have demonstrated that lidar is an accurate tool for estimating forest aboveground biomass. However, results v...

Authors: Antonio Montagnoli, Sara Fusco, Mattia Terzaghi, Alan Kirschbaum, Dirk Pflugmacher, Warren B Cohen, Gabriella S Scippa and Donato Chiatante

Negative consequences of positive feedbacks in US wildfire management

Over the last two decades wildfire activity, damage, and management cost within the US have increased substantially. These increases have been associated with a number of factors including climate change and f...

Authors: David E Calkin, Matthew P Thompson and Mark A Finney

Silvicultural alternatives to conventional even-aged forest management - what limits global adoption?

The development of forestry as a scientific and management discipline over the last two centuries has mainly emphasized intensive management operations focused on increased commodity production, mostly wood. T...

Authors: Klaus J Puettmann, Scott McG Wilson, Susan C Baker, Pablo J Donoso, Lars Drössler, Girma Amente, Brian D Harvey, Thomas Knoke, Yuanchang Lu, Susanna Nocentini, Francis E Putz, Toshiya Yoshida and Jürgen Bauhus

Evaluation of state and community/private forests in Punjab, Pakistan using geospatial data and related techniques

Forests are fundamental in maintaining water supplies, providing economic goods, mitigating climate change, and maintaining biodiversity, thus providing many of the world’s poorest with income, food and medici...

Authors: Naeem Shahzad, Urooj Saeed, Hammad Gilani, Sajid Rashid Ahmad, Irfan Ashraf and Syed Muhammad Irteza

Optimizing continuous cover management of boreal forest when timber prices and tree growth are stochastic

Decisions on forest management are made under risk and uncertainty because the stand development cannot be predicted exactly and future timber prices are unknown. Deterministic calculations may lead to biased ...

Authors: Timo Pukkala

Methods of modelling relative growth rate

Analysing and modelling plant growth is an important interdisciplinary field of plant science. The use of relative growth rates, involving the analysis of plant growth relative to plant size, has more or less ...

Authors: Arne Pommerening and Anders Muszta

Adaptive economic and ecological forest management under risk

Forest managers must deal with inherently stochastic ecological and economic processes. The future growth of trees is uncertain, and so is their value. The randomness of low-impact, high frequency or rare cata...

Authors: Joseph Buongiorno and Mo Zhou

Forecasting the development of boreal paludified forests in response to climate change: a case study using Ontario ecosite classification

Successional paludification, a dynamic process that leads to the formation of peatlands, is influenced by climatic factors and site features such as surficial deposits and soil texture. In boreal regions, proj...

Authors: Benoit Lafleur, Nicole J Fenton and Yves Bergeron

Managing project risks and uncertainties

This article considers threats to a project slipping on budget, schedule and fit-for-purpose. Threat is used here as the collective for risks (quantifiable bad things that can happen) and uncertainties (poorly...

Authors: Mike Mentis

Evaluation of sampling strategies to estimate crown biomass

Depending on tree and site characteristics crown biomass accounts for a significant portion of the total aboveground biomass in the tree. Crown biomass estimation is useful for different purposes including eva...

Authors: Krishna P Poudel, Hailemariam Temesgen and Andrew N Gray

Does overshoot in leaf development of ponderosa pine in wet years leads to bark beetle outbreaks on fine-textured soils in drier years?

Frequent outbreaks of insects and diseases have been recorded in the native forests of western North America during the last few decades, but the distribution of these outbreaks has been far from uniform. In s...

Authors: Wendy Peterman and Richard H Waring

Patterns of species dominance, diversity and dispersion in ‘Khasi hill sal’ forest ecosystem in northeast India

The ‘Khasi hill sal’ forest ecosystem in Meghalaya, India represents the easternmost limit of sal distribution. We tested if tree diversity and compositional heterogeneity of this ecosystem was higher than oth...

Authors: Amit Kumar Tripathi and Uma Shankar

Development of monitoring and assessment of forest biomass and carbon storage in China

Addressing climate change has become a common issue around the world in the 21st century and equally an important mission in Chinese forestry. Understanding the development of monitoring and assessment of fore...

Authors: Wei-Sheng Zeng

Demographic variation and habitat specialization of tree species in a diverse tropical forest of Cameroon

Many tree species in tropical forests have distributions tracking local ridge-slope-valley topography. Previous work in a 50-ha plot in Korup National Park, Cameroon, demonstrated that 272 species, or 63% of t...

Authors: David Kenfack, George B Chuyong, Richard Condit, Sabrina E Russo and Duncan W Thomas

Tree survival and maximum density of planted forests – Observations from South African spacing studies

Among the most important aspects of risk and hazard studies relating to forest ecosystems are maximum forest density and density-dependent tree survival.

Authors: Klaus v Gadow and Heyns Kotze

Linking individual-tree and whole-stand models for forest growth and yield prediction

Different types of growth and yield models provide essential information for making informed decisions on how to manage forests. Whole-stand models often provide well-behaved outputs at the stand level, but la...

Authors: Quang V Cao

A spatially-explicit count data regression for modeling the density of forest cockchafer (Melolontha hippocastani) larvae in the Hessian Ried (Germany)

In this paper, a regression model for predicting the spatial distribution of forest cockchafer larvae in the Hessian Ried region (Germany) is presented. The forest cockchafer, a native biotic pest, is a major ...

Authors: Matthias Schmidt and Rainer Hurling

Competition effects in an afrotemperate forest

Information about competition responses is mainly available for monospecific stands or mixed stands with a small number of species. Studies on complex multi-species and highly structured forest ecosystems are ...

Authors: Thomas Seifert, Stefan Seifert, Armin Seydack, Graham Durrheim and Klaus von Gadow

Using a stand-level model to predict light absorption in stands with vertically and horizontally heterogeneous canopies

Forest ecosystem functioning is strongly influenced by the absorption of photosynthetically active radiation (APAR), and therefore, accurate predictions of APAR are critical for many process-based forest growt...

Authors: David I Forrester, Rubén Guisasola, Xiaolu Tang, Axel T Albrecht, Tran Lam Dong and Guerric le Maire

Evaluation of different approaches to individual tree growth and survival modelling using data collected at irregular intervals – a case study for Pinus patula in Kenya

The minimum set of sub-models for simulating stand dynamics on an individual-tree basis consists of tree-level models for diameter increment and survival. Ingrowth model is a necessary third component in uneve...

Authors: Rita Juma, Timo Pukkala, Sergio de-Miguel and Mbae Muchiri

Can plasticity make spatial structure irrelevant in individual-tree models?

Distance-dependent individual-tree models have commonly been found to add little predictive power to that of distance-independent ones. One possible reason is plasticity, the ability of trees to lean and to al...

Authors: Oscar García

A model of seasonal foliage dynamics of the subtropical mangrove species Rhizophora stylosa Griff. growing at the northern limit of its distribution

Progress of forest production in response to the environment requires a quantitative understanding of leaf area development. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the dynamics of seasonal crown foliage in ...

Authors: Sahadev Sharma, A T M Rafiqul Hoque, Kangkuso Analuddin and Akio Hagihara

Assessing citizen science opportunities in forest monitoring using probabilistic topic modelling

With mounting global environmental, social and economic pressures the resilience and stability of forests and thus the provisioning of vital ecosystem services is increasingly threatened. Intensified monitorin...

Authors: Stefan Daume, Matthias Albert and Klaus von Gadow

Modelling of the spread of a potential invasive pest, the Siberian moth (Dendrolimus sibiricus) in Europe

The Siberian moth (Dendrolimus sibiricus) (SM) defoliates several tree species from the genera Larix, Picea and Abies in northern Asia, east of the Urals. The SM is a potential invasive forest pest in Europe beca...

Authors: Timo Möykkynen and Timo Pukkala

Developing a dynamic growth model for teak plantations in India

Tectona grandis (teak) is one of the most important tropical timber speciesoccurring naturally in India. Appropriate growth models, based on advanced modeling techniques,are not available but are necessary for th...

Authors: Vindhya Prasad Tewari, Juan Gabriel Álvarez-gonzález and Oscar García

Forest observational studies-an essential infrastructure for sustainable use of natural resources

This contribution complements Forest Ecosystems’ Thematic Series on “Forest Observational Studies”. We provide essential clarification regarding the definition and purpose of long-term field studies, review some ...

Authors: XiuHai Zhao, Javier Corral-Rivas, ChunYu Zhang, Hailemariam Temesgen and Klaus v Gadow

Unsuspected implications arising from assumptions in simulations: insights from recasting a forest growth model in system dynamics

Familiarity with a simulation platform can seduce modellers into accepting untested assumptions for convenience of implementation. These assumptions may have consequences greater than commonly suspected, and i...

Authors: Jerome K Vanclay

Local and generalized height-diameter models with random parameters for mixed, uneven-aged forests in Northwestern Durango, Mexico

We used mixed models with random components to develop height-diameter (h-d) functions for mixed, uneven-aged stands in northwestern Durango (Mexico), considering the breast height diameter (d) and stand varia...

Authors: Sacramento Corral-Rivas, Juan Gabriel Álvarez-González, Felipe Crecente-Campo and José Javier Corral-Rivas

Ingrowth, survival and height growth of small trees in uneven-aged Picea abies stands in southern Finland

The purpose of the study was to analyse height growth, mortality, and ingrowth of individual small-sized trees in uneven-aged spruce-dominated stands. It was based on experimental data from 16 stands for a 15-...

Authors: Kalle Eerikäinen, Sauli Valkonen and Timo Saksa

Height increment of understorey Norway spruces under different tree canopies

Stands having advance regeneration of spruce are logical places to start continuous cover forestry (CCF) in fertile and mesic boreal forests. However, the development of advance regeneration is poorly known.

Authors: Olavi Laiho, Timo Pukkala and Erkki Lähde

Stand management optimization – the role of simplifications

Studies on optimal stand management often make simplifications or restrict the choice of treatments. Examples of simplifications are neglecting natural regeneration that appears on a plantation site, omitting ...

Authors: Timo Pukkala, Erkki Lähde and Olavi Laiho

Science writing in the real world

The objective of this contribution is to consider guides to technical writing. Since the professional writes what he does and does what he writes, guides to how you execute the one relate to how you perform th...

Authors: Mike Mentis

Editorial – Forest Ecosystems

Authors: Yin Weilun and Klaus v Gadow