Search results for " forests"

Advanced earth observation approach for multiscale forest ecosystem services modeling and mapping (MIMOSE)

2014

In the last decade ecosystem services (ES) have been proposed as a method for quantifying the multifunctional role of forest ecosystems. Their spatial distribution on large areas is frequently limited by the lack of information, because field data collection with traditional methods requires much effort in terms of time and cost. In this contribution we propose a methodology (namely, MultIscale Mapping Of ecoSystem servicEs - MIMOSE) based on the integration of remotely sensed images and field observation to produce a wall-to-wall geodatabase of forest parcels accompanied with several information useful as a basis for future trade-off analysis of different ES. Here, we present the applicat…

More wood but less biodiversity in forests in Finland: a historical evaluation

2022

National forest inventories (NFI) in Finland provide empirical evidence for a marked increase in tree growth, total forest area, and total timber volume over the past century. Meanwhile, the assessments of threatened forest species and habitats indicate continuous degradation of biodiversity in Finnish forests. To shed light on this seeming paradox, we summarized the temporal patterns of forest characteristics (indicators) that have major influence on biodiversity, comparing the structure of current Finnish forests with natural and historical references. Using a variety of data sources, we estimated the proportion of area of old-growth forest and of deciduous-dominated forests, the density …

Structural variables drive the distribution of the sensitive lichen Lobaria pulmonaria in Mediterranean old-growth forests

2015

a b s t r a c t We tested the hypothesis that structural variables related to old-growth features affect the distribution of Lobaria pulmonaria in a Mediterranean National Park of Italy. A total of 36 plots, with old-growth characteristics and representing overall three forest types (beech- oak- and mixed- forests) were studied. The lichen was absent in about half of the sites, suggesting that the selection of old-growth forests based solely on structural features is not sufficient to predict the presence of this species, which therefore proves to be rather sensitive and selective. Its abundance was related to high tree circumference and basal area, and to availability of deadwood, confirmi…

Forest structural elements and bryophyte species richness in managed forest landscape

2013

Elektroniskā versija nesatur pielikumus

Adaptive Management as a Vehicle to Achieve Sustainability of Boreal Forests : A Historical Review from Fennoscandia to Minnesota

2021

Located solely in the northern hemisphere, boreal forests contain an estimated one-third of Earth’s forested land. The purpose of this work aimed at reviewing the evolution of approaches in land planning and management of boreal forests in Finland and Northern Sweden, while comparing these to those developed in Minnesota. The nature of this work is historical research of forests use and management during the last 200 years. The knowledge from past histories is valuable to improve management approaches that aim at retaining the economic viability of logging, without jeopardizing the regenerative capabilities of forest ecosystems. Various methods and restoration efforts aimed at recovering fr…

Developing tools for biodiversity surveys : studies with wood-inhabiting fungi

2010

Global Estimation of Biophysical Variables from Google Earth Engine Platform

2018

This paper proposes a processing chain for the derivation of global Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR), Fraction Vegetation Cover (FVC), and Canopy water content (CWC) maps from 15-years of MODIS data exploiting the capabilities of the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud platform. The retrieval chain is based on a hybrid method inverting the PROSAIL radiative transfer model (RTM) with Random forests (RF) regression. A major feature of this work is the implementation of a retrieval chain exploiting the GEE capabilities using global and climate data records (CDR) of both MODIS surface reflectance and LAI/FAPAR datasets allowing the global estim…

Performance Dissimilarities in European Union Manufacturing: The Effect of Ownership and Technological Intensity

2021

Our paper addresses the relevance of a set of continuous and categorical variables that describe industry characteristics to differences in performance between foreign versus locally owned companies in industries with dissimilar levels of technological intensity. Including data on manufacturing sector performance from 20 European Union member countries and covering the 2009–2016 period, we used the random forests methodology to identify the best predictors of EU manufacturing industries’ a priori classification based on two main attributes: ownership (foreign versus local) and technological intensity. We found that EU foreign-owned businesses dominate locally owned ones in terms of size, wh…

Application of selected methods of black box for modelling the settleability process in wastewater treatment plant

2017

The paper described how the results of measurement s of inflow wastewater temperature in the chamber, a degree of external and internal recirculation in the biological-mechanical wastewater treatment plan t (WWTP) in Cedzyna near Kielce, Poland, were used to make predictions of settleability of activated sludge. Three methods,namely: multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), random forests (RF) and modified random forests (RF+ SOM) were employed to compute activated sludge settleability. The results of analysis indicate that modified random forests demonstrate the best predictive abilities.

Application of selected supervised classification methods to bank marketing campaign

2016

Supervised classification covers a number of data mining methods based on training data. These methods have been successfully applied to solve multi-criteria complex classification problems in many domains, including economical issues. In this paper we discuss features of some supervised classification methods based on decision trees and apply them to the direct marketing campaigns data of a Portuguese banking institution. We discuss and compare the following classification methods: decision trees, bagging, boosting, and random forests. A classification problem in our approach is defined in a scenario where a bank’s clients make decisions about the activation of their deposits. The obtained…