Search results for "Rest"
showing 10 items of 8829 documents
Temporal variations in microclimate cooling induced by urban trees in Mainz, Germany
2016
Abstract Global warming is likely to increase the frequency and magnitude of heat waves. As the urban geometry and material amplifies warming, city dwellers will face an intensification of heat-induced health problems and mortality. Although increased vegetation cover is frequently used in urban planning to mitigate excessive heat, temporal variations, as well as the influence of synoptic weather conditions and surrounding urban geometry on the vegetation cooling effect, are still unclear. In this study, we monitored the transpiration-induced cooling from trees over two summers in five urban settings characterized by varying levels of greenness and urban geometry in the city of Mainz (Germa…
Do environmental diversity approaches lead to improved site selection? A comparison with the multi-species approach
2008
This paper suggests a new approach to select conservation areas cost-effectively according to the concept of complementarity and representation of focal natural features. The suggested environmental diversity (ED) site selection model maximizes ecological diversity, measured via ordination of the chosen taxa communities. Given their fundamental role in ecosystem functioning, vascular plants are chosen as the indicator taxa. We test the ED indicator model by contrasting it to the conventional site selection indicator (MS model), which maximizes the representation of species number in the indicator taxa. We demonstrate that the ED model is more cost-effective than the MS model. More important…
Ecological and climatological signals in tree-ring width and density chronologies along a latitudinal boreal transect
2016
ABSTRACTShifts in the climate sensitivity of trees throughout the twentieth century might indicate climate change effects in the boreal forest ecosystem. We here evaluated such potential changes by analyzing six tree-ring width (TRW) and maximum latewood density (MXD) chronologies from northern, central and southern boreal forests in Finland (60°N–69°N). Besides latitudinal effects, differing micro-sites (lakeshore and inland) were considered to evaluate the influence of ground water access on twentieth-century tree-ring formation and climate sensitivity. Overall, the boreal MXD chronologies appeared less affected by micro-site conditions compared to the TRW chronologies. Along the boreal t…
Optimizing management to enhance multifunctionality in a boreal forest landscape
2016
Summary The boreal biome, representing approximately one-third of remaining global forests, provides a number of crucial ecosystem services. A particular challenge in forest ecosystems is to reconcile demand for an increased timber production with provisioning of other ecosystem services and biodiversity. However, there is still little knowledge about how forest management could help solve this challenge. Hence, studies that investigate how to manage forests to reduce trade-offs between ecosystem services and biodiversity are urgently needed to help forest owners and policy makers take informed decisions. We applied seven alternative forest management regimes using a forest growth simulator…
Environmental drivers interactively affect individual tree growth across temperate European forests
2019
Forecasting the growth of tree species to future environmental changes requires a better understanding of its determinants. Tree growth is known to respond to global-change drivers such as climate change or atmospheric deposition, as well as to local land-use drivers such as forest management. Yet, large geographical scale studies examining interactive growth responses to multiple global-change drivers are relatively scarce and rarely consider management effects. Here, we assessed the interactive effects of three global-change drivers (temperature, precipitation and nitrogen deposition) on individual tree growth of three study species (Quercus robur/petraea, Fagus sylvatica and Fraxinus exc…
Initial understory response to experimental silvicultural treatments in a temperate oak-dominated forest
2018
In recent decades, alternative management techniques integrating conservation concerns into industrial forestry have become increasingly widespread. In order to compare the effects of various management methods on forest site and biodiversity, a systematic forestry experiment was conducted in a managed, mature oak–hornbeam forest. The present work introduces the 2-year responses of environmental variables and understory vegetation to different silvicultural treatments. These belong either to clear-cutting (clear-cutting, retention tree group), to shelterwood (preparation cutting), or to continuous cover forestry systems (gap-cutting). The experiment follows a complete block design with four…
Continuous cover forestry is a cost-efficient tool to increase multifunctionality of boreal production forests in Fennoscandia
2017
Abstract Earlier research has suggested that the diversification of silvicultural strategies is a cost-efficient tool to ensure multifunctionality in production forests. This study compared the effects of continuous cover forestry and conventional rotation forestry on ecosystem services and biodiversity in boreal forests in Finland. We simulated over 25,000 commercial forest stands for 100 years under continuous cover and rotation forest management. Forests without management were used as a reference. We compared the effects of silvicultural practices over space and time on ecosystem services, biodiversity indicators and multifunctionality. Our results revealed that continuous cover forestr…
More is more? : Forest management allocation at different spatial scales to mitigate conflicts between ecosystem services
2017
Context: Multi-objective management can mitigate conflicts among land-use objectives. However, the effectiveness of a multi-objective solution depends on the spatial scale at which land-use is optimized. This is because the ecological variation within the planning region influences the potential for site-specific prioritization according to the different objectives. Objectives: We optimized the allocation of forest management strategies to maximize the joint production of two conflicting objectives, timber production and carbon storage, at increasing spatial scales. We examined the impacts of the extent of the planning region on the severity of the conflict, the potential for its mitigation…
Conflicting objectives in production forests pose a challenge for forest management
2017
Conflicts among different ecosystem services have been shown to be common and potentially exacerbated by management interventions. In order to improve the sustainability of natural resource use, the occurrence of these conflicts and the effects that management actions have on them need to be understood. We studied the conflicts between ecosystem services and the potential to solve them by management choices in boreal production forests. Our study area consisted of nearly 30,000 forest stands which were simulated for 50 years into the future under alternative management scenarios. The study included four ecosystem services – timber production, bilberry production, carbon storage, and pest re…
Changes in the Spatial Structure of the Landscape of Isolated Forest Complexes in the 19th and 20th Centuries and Their Potential Effects on Supporti…
2020
This study assesses the changes in the spatial structure of the landscape between 1825 and 2019 in the isolated, protected forest complex of the Niemodlin Forests. Based on the analysis of changes in this structure, a change the supporting ecosystem services related to the protection of biodiversity was proposed. The landscape metrics were used separately for the analysis of the structure of the whole landscape, and individual types of ecosystems were used in the research. There were no major changes in the share of individual types of ecosystems during the period under review. At the same time, a very large increase in built-up areas and tree stands was found in 1825. Landscape metrics poi…