Search results for "Forest"

Towards bioeconomy : a three-phase Delphi study on forest biorefinery diffusion in Scandinavia and North America

2012

Increasing temperature and productivity change biomass, trophic pyramids and community‐level omega‐3 fatty acid content in subarctic lake food webs

2021

Climate change in the Arctic is outpacing the global average and land-use is intensifying due to exploitation of previously inaccessible or unprofitable natural resources. A comprehensive understanding of how the joint effects of changing climate and productivity modify lake food web structure, biomass, trophic pyramid shape and abundance of physiologically essential biomolecules (omega-3 fatty acids) in the biotic community is lacking. We conducted a space-for-time study in 20 subarctic lakes spanning a climatic (+3.2 degrees C and precipitation: +30%) and chemical (dissolved organic carbon: +10 mg/L, total phosphorus: +45 mu g/L and total nitrogen: +1,000 mu g/L) gradient to test how temp…

Dark matters : contrasting responses of stream biofilm to browning and loss of riparian shading

2022

Concentrations of terrestrial-derived dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in freshwater ecosystems have increased consistently, causing freshwater browning. The mechanisms behind browning are complex, but in forestry-intensive regions browning is accelerated by land drainage. Forestry actions in streamside riparian forests alter canopy shading, which together with browning is expected to exert a complex and largely unpredictable control over key ecosystem functions. We conducted a stream mesocosm experiment with three levels of browning (ambient vs. moderate vs. high, with 2.7 and 5.5-fold increase, respectively, in absorbance) crossed with two levels of riparian shading (70% light reduction vs.…

Impact of Conservation Policies on Households’ Deforestation Decisions in Protected and Open-Access Forests: Cases of Moribane Forest Reserve and Ser…

2022

Tropical deforestation is considered a global priority due to its environmental, social, and economic impacts at international, national, and household levels. Conservation policies constitute one of the pathways to reverse this scenario. This paper examines the influence of forest protection measures on local communities’ livelihood decisions regarding forest clearing. It compares deforestation, access to forest resources, and households’ strategies in protected and open-access forests: the Moribane Forest Reserve (MFR) and Serra Chôa (SCH), two environmentally sensitive areas with different conservation statuses in Manica Province, central Mozambique. Socioeconomic data were collected fro…

What makes segmentation good? A case study in boreal forest habitat mapping

2013

Segmentation goodness evaluation is a set of approaches meant for deciding which segmentation is good. In this study, we tested different supervised segmentation evaluation measures and visual interpretation in the case of boreal forest habitat mapping in Southern Finland. The data used were WorldView-2 satellite imagery, a lidar digital elevation model (DEM), and a canopy height model (CHM) in 2 m resolution. The segmentation methods tested were the fractal net evolution approach (FNEA) and IDRISI watershed segmentation. Overall, 252 different segmentation methods, layers, and parameter combinations were tested. We also used eight different habitat delineations as reference polygons agains…

Diuron mobility through vineyard soils contaminated with copper

2005

International audience; The herbicide diuron is frequently applied to vineyard soils in Burgundy, along with repeated treatments with Bordeaux mixture (a blend of copper sulfate and calcium hydroxide) that result in elevated copper concentrations. Cu could in principle affect the fate and transport of diuron or its metabolites in the soil either directly by complexation or indirectly by altering the populations or activity of microbes involved in their degradation. To assess the effect of high Cu concentrations on diuron transport, an experiment was designed with ten undisturbed columns of calcareous and acidic soils contaminated with 17–509 mg kg−1 total Cu (field-applied). Grass was plant…

National high-resolution conservation prioritisation of boreal forests

2023

The continuous decline of forest biodiversity highlights the importance of the development of cost-effective and ecologically sustainable land-use planning approaches. Spatial conservation prioritisation (SCP) can be regarded as a useful tool for this challenge. We produced high-resolution, national scale SCP analyses to identify unprotected forest areas that host valuable forest biodiversity. We used stand-based modelled dead wood potential (DWP) data as a primary surrogate for conservation value. In addition, data on forestry operations that have negative impacts on biodiversity, connectivity between forest areas, the observations of red-listed forest species, connectivity to forest habit…

Can learning from the past help to predict the future in the environmental impact assessment on reindeer husbandry?

2014

Natural enemies emerging in cereal fields in spring may contribute to biological control

2022

1.Biological pest control is known to depend on landscape heterogeneity. However, such relationship shows irregular pattern and seems influenced by local farming practices and natural enemies that overwinter within crop fields. The objective of this study was to assess the contribution of emerging natural enemies in spring to biological control, and their response to the interaction between landscape heterogeneity and farming intensity. 2.We monitored the overwintering insect community using emergence traps and measured the local potential pest predation using prey cards in 30 cereal fields, in spring in France. Study fields were selected along a landscape heterogeneity gradient and farming…

Using static and dynamic indicators to evaluate soil physical quality in a Sicilian area

2016

Both capacitive indicators derived from the water retention curve and dynamic measurements of the flow-weighted mean pore radius, R0, were used to assess the soil physical quality of two agricultural areas (cropland and olive orchard) and two natural areas (grassland and managed woodlot plantation) potentially subject to soil degradation. The overall idea of the study was to investigate whether a dynamic indicator quantitatively derived from hydraulic conductivity measurements could be used to supplement the traditionally applied capacitive indicators retrieved from water retention measurements. According to the available criteria, only the surface layer of the cropland site showed optimal …