Search results for "forestry"
showing 10 items of 1998 documents
The preferences of saproxylic beetle species for different dead wood types created in forest restoration treatments
2010
Restoration by imitating natural disturbances is widely practised in boreal forests to increase the availability of habitats for specialized species. We studied the abundance and species richness of saproxylic beetles on different types of created dead wood during 2 years after restoration. The study was conducted on areas of a large-scale experiment in which Norway spruce ( Picea abies (L.) Karst.) forests were restored by controlled burning and partial harvesting with down wood retention in southern Finland. More beetle species were attracted to spruces than to birches and more species were attracted to burnt trees than to unburnt trees killed by girdling. Birch-living species consistent…
The effects of small-scale disturbance on forest birds: a meta-analysis
2010
Small-scale disturbance is a significant process in all major forest biomes. Some silvicultural practices, particularly group selection harvesting, intend to emulate natural small-scale disturbance by harvesting small clearcuts in the continuous forest. We conducted a meta-analysis on the effects of small-scale harvesting on North American breeding forest birds. We extracted species richness and relative abundance of several functional bird groups and guilds from published studies and compared them between gap-dominated and unlogged forest as a function of forest type and the size and age of the gap. The abundance of many bird groups was higher in the gap-dominated than in the continuous f…
Changes in land use and physiological transitions of a Juniperus thurifera forest: from decline to recovery
2015
All Rights Reserved. Forest decline is frequently associated with infection; however, infections habitually affect trees that have been previously debilitated by environmental stress. Nevertheless, the causes and physiology of noninfectious forest decline are not well known. Some Juniperus thurifera L. forests presented severe (noninfectious) declines, with defoliations over 50%. The goal of this study was to determine the causes and characterize the physiology of this noninfectious decline, and we hypothesized that it could be related to environmental stress from increasing interspecific competition resulting from land abandonment. We randomly assigned60 trees to either a control group or …
A Multi-Criteria Decision Support System for Strategic Planning at the Swiss Forest Enterprise Level: Coping With Climate Change and Shifting Demands…
2021
Sustainable forest management plays a key role for forest biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services (BES), including the important service of carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation. Forest managers, however, find themselves in the increasingly complex planning situation to balance the often conflicting demands in BES. To cope with this situation, a prototype of a decision support system (DSS) for strategic (long-term) planning at the forest enterprise level was developed in the present project. The DSS was applied at three case study enterprises (CSEs) in Northern Switzerland, two lowland and one higher-elevation enterprise, for a 50-year time horizon (2010 to 2060…
Interactive decision support and trade-off analysis for sustainable forest landscape planning under deep uncertainty
2022
Sustainable environmental management often involves long-term time horizons and multiple conflicting objectives and, by nature, is affected by different sources of uncertainty. Many sources of uncertainty, such as climate change or government policies, cannot be addressed using probabilistic models, and, therefore, they can be seen to contain deep uncertainty. In this setting, the variety of possible future states is represented as a set of scenarios lacking any information about the likelihood of occurring. Integrating deep uncertainty into multiobjective decision support increases complexity, calling for the elaboration of appropriate methods and tools. This paper proposes a novel intera…
Stem-injection of herbicide for control of Ailanthus altissima (Mill.) Swingle: a practical source of power for drilling holes in stems
2013
Abstract: Ailanthus altissima is a well-known invasive tree in many parts of the world showing an outstanding ability to establish within woodlands and other less-disturbed habitats. Previous studies have reported that control of this species is very difficult because of its strong resprouting. Indeed, effective control can be achieved only by mechanical treatment followed by the application of a systemic herbicide. Operating drills or saws and other mechanical equipment require electric power supply which is not readily available in many invaded sites, notably shrubslands and woodlands. In two study sites, we evaluated control obtained by glyphosate through a stem-injection technique and c…
Transformation of clay-sized minerals in soils exposed to prolonged regular alternation of redox conditions
2016
Abstract The direction of the transformation of Fe-bearing minerals under harshly changing redox conditions is still under debate. Some studies suggest preferential accumulation of weakly crystalline Fe oxides while other studies showed that repeated redox cycles favour the presence of crystalline phases. Since characterized by distinct redox cycles, paddy soils are ideal for studying redox-related transformations of Fe oxides and Fe-bearing clay minerals. We analysed changes in the Fe mineral assemblage upon long-term reduction–oxidation cycles along a chronosequence of 100, 700, and 2000-year-old paddy soils developed on comparable parent material relative to two non-irrigated counterpart…
Stakeholders' Perceptions about Fire Impacts on Lithuanian Protected Areas
2014
The aim of this work is to study Lithuanian stakeholders' perceptions of fire impacts in protected areas. For this study, the stakeholders consisted of foresters, ecologists and farmers. A clear understanding of the opinions of stakeholders about fire effects on environmental, social and economic aspects of Lithuanian protected areas will allow an assessment of the stakeholders' reaction to fire policy, including government measures towards fire prevention, suppression and application of prescribed fire to landscape management. The results showed that stakeholders in general think that fire is not a threat to Lithuania and to the ecological processes in the protected areas. However, they ag…
Response of soil bacteria to Hg (II) in relation to soil characteristics and cell location
2006
The response of indigenous bacterial communities to the addition of inorganic mercury (50 μM of Hg(II)) was compared over a 30 day period in four soils of contrasting properties. Hg(II) impact was estimated by following population dynamics of viable heterotrophic bacteria (VH) and mercury resistant bacteria (HgR) by indirect enumeration in unfractionated soil and in the inner and outer parts of soil aggregates obtained by successive washings. Numbers of VH bacteria in unfractionated soils were not affected by mercury in any of the studied soils, whereas an increase in resistant bacteria was observed in all of them. The lag phase before the increase of HgR bacteria and the magnitude of the e…
High emissions of greenhouse gases from grasslands on peat and other organic soils
2016
Drainage has turned peatlands from a carbon sink into one of the world's largest greenhouse gas (GHG) sources from cultivated soils. We analyzed a unique data set (12 peatlands, 48 sites and 122 annual budgets) of mainly unpublished GHG emissions from grasslands on bog and fen peat as well as other soils rich in soil organic carbon (SOC) in Germany. Emissions and environmental variables were measured with identical methods. Site-averaged GHG budgets were surprisingly variable (29.2 ± 17.4 t CO2 -eq. ha-1 yr-1 ) and partially higher than all published data and the IPCC default emission factors for GHG inventories. Generally, CO2 (27.7 ± 17.3 t CO2 ha-1 yr-1 ) dominated the GHG budget. Nit…