Forests, Volume 10, Issue 11

In this paper, we propose a new estimator for creating expansion factors for survey plots in the US Forest Service (USFS) Forest Inventory and Analysis program. This estimator was previously used in the GIS literature, where it was called Penalized M...

Dead wood comprises a vast amount of biological legacies that set the scene for ecological regeneration after wildfires, yet its removal is the most frequent management strategy worldwide. Soil-dwelling organisms are conspicuous, and they provide ess...

The monitoring of tree species diversity is important for forest or wetland ecosystem service maintenance or resource management. Remote sensing is an efficient alternative to traditional field work to map tree species diversity over large areas. Pre...

The herbaceous understory represents a key component of forest biodiversity across temperate forests of Europe. Here, we quantified changes in the diversity and composition of the forest understory layer in representative Slovenian forest ecosystems...

The genus Gnetum includes pantropical trees, shrubs and lianas, with unresolved phylogenetic relationships with other seed plant groups. Despite the reference genome for this genus being recently published, the molecular mechanisms that regulate the...

Research Highlights: Soil carbon storage (SOC) decreased due to forest fragmentation through lower proportion of macroaggregate distribution, higher storage of fine roots and litter falls, and lower fine root production rate. Background and Objective...

Soil microbes are an important component of soil ecosystems that influence material circulation and are involved in the energy flow of ecosystems. The increase in atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition affects all types of terrestrial ecosystems, includ...

Eogystia hippophaecola Hua, Chou, Fang et Chen (Lepidoptera: Cossidae) is an important borer pest of the sea buckthorn forest (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) in China. Its larvae, which are highly cold tolerant, mainly overwinter in sea buckthorn roots. He...

Efficient methodologies for mapping forest types in complicated mountain areas are essential for the implementation of sustainable forest management practices and monitoring. Existing solutions dedicated to forest-type mapping are primarily focused o...

Deployment of well-adapted, water use efficient, and productive genotypes may be essential for the sustainability of both forests and wood supply for the forest industry, as climate change is increasing water stress around the world. This study aimed...

Essential oils (EOs) are natural and economically valuable aromatic compounds obtained from a variety of crops and trees, including forest trees, which have different therapeutic and biological activities. This project aims to assess the impact of di...

Forest biomass has recently been highlighted as a renewable energy source in South Korea. As the Renewable Energy Certificate weight has been revised to encourage the use of forest biomass for energy production, forest operations have focused on the...

Forest managers need access to targeted scientific information about the impacts of climate change in order to adapt to climate change. Vulnerability assessments address this need and are common across a range of disciplines and geographies; however,...

Forest and landscape restoration (FLR) is a powerful strategy for large-scale tropical forest recovery, and payment for ecosystem services (PES) is used to support FLR programs and projects on privately-owned land. In this article, we discuss the les...

Understanding urban tree responses to drought, salt stress, and co-occurring stresses, as well as the capability to recover afterward, is important to prevent the cited stresses’ negative effects on tree performance and ecological functionality...

The home-field advantage (HFA) of litter decomposition dynamics has been investigated intensively in different ecosystems with a wide variety of plant types. HFA mainly occurs due to the specialization of a soil organism. However, for the HFA, the li...

Protection of forest soils during harvesting operations is necessary to reduce damage and accelerate recovery time. The current study aims to evaluate soil physical properties, natural regeneration, and its recovery process in treatments including sl...

Plant growth depends on soil mineral elements, a lack of which results in reduced nutrient accumulation leading to poor growth and resistance in plants. Therefore, more information is needed about the response of Pistacia chinensis Bunge (P. chinensi...

Betula alnoides is a valuable timber species with wide ecological adaptability in Southeast Asia and southern China. There are more than 150,000 ha of B. alnoides plantations in China until now. However, heavy differentiation in growth and quality tr...

Research Highlights: Two novel sets of polymorphic microsatellite markers were developed for Prioria balsamifera and Prioria oxyphylla through high-throughput sequencing. Validation in two populations of each species proved the utility of the develo...

To optimize suppression, restoration, and prevention plans against wildfire, postfire assessment is a key input. Since little research has been carried out on applying Sentinel-2 imagery through an integrated approach to evaluate how environmental pa...

The recreational value of forests in mountain areas creates significant potential for local growth. Indeed, in recent decades, it has been noted that there has been an increase in the popularity of forests recognized as tourism destinations with a st...

In this work, we examine the effects of commercial thinning on stand volume and individual stem form in nine naturally regenerated black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P.) stands. We compared these study sites with controls in the commercial borea...

Forest soil organic carbon (SOC) accounts for a large portion of global soil carbon stocks. Accurately mapping forest SOC stocks is a necessity for quantifying forest carbon cycling and forest soil sustainable management. In this study, we used a boo...

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based remote sensing has limitations in acquiring images before a forest fire, although burn severity can be analyzed by comparing images before and after a fire. Determining the burned surface area is a challenging clas...

Research Highlights: This study reviews the available literature on processed non-timber forest products (NTFPs) in order to comprehensively identify relevant factors enabling or constraining their potential to contribute to rural development. Backgr...

In the 1980s, the Western Sudety Mountains were affected by a forest dieback process, resulting in large-scale deforestation covering an area of about 15,000 ha. A similar phenomenon is presently being observed in the Western Beskidy and Eastern Sude...

The genus Juniperus (of the Cupressaceae family) is the second most prevalent group of conifers on Earth. Juniper species are widely dispersed in the Northern Hemisphere, in Europe and Asia, and in Africa and Central America. Juniper species are resi...

Background and Objectives: Summer droughts are expected to increase in central and western Europe both in terms of frequency and intensity, justifying studies on longer term legacies of drought stress on tree species and their hybrids. Materials and...

Research Highlights: A large scale effort to screen, characterize, and select Trichoderma strains with the potential to antagonize Armillaria species revealed promising candidates for field applications. Background and Objectives: Armillaria species...

High severity stand-replacing wildfires can deeply affect forest ecosystems whose composition includes plant species lacking fire-related traits and specific adaptations. Land managers and policymakers need to be aware of the importance of properly m...

In fire-adapted conifer forests of the Western U.S., changing land use has led to increased forest densities and fuel conditions partly responsible for increasing the extent of high-severity wildfires in the region. In response, land managers often u...

Nut quality is fundamental to the economic viability of the Chinese sweet chestnut industry, but fruit rot disease significantly reduces this quality. In this study, we investigated chestnut rot in Anhui and Hubei provinces in China. Typical brown ro...

Tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons) cause large-scale disturbances in forest ecosystems all over the world. In the summer of 2016, a strong tropical cyclone named Lionrock created windthrow patches in the area of more than 400 km² on the fore...

As a part of the renewable energy cycle, forest biomass resources are considered to be important renewable materials and energy sources in many countries. It is evident from international and local research into forest biomass utilization that severa...

Cinnamomum camphora is a valuable broad-leaf tree indigenous to South China and East Asia and has been widely cultivated and utilized by humans since ancient times. However, owing to its overutilization for essential oil extraction, the Transplanting...

The black-winged subterranean termite, Odontotermes formosanus Shiraki, is a severe pest of plantations and forests in China. This termite cultures symbiotic Termitomyces in the fungal combs, which are challenged by antagonistic microbes such as Tric...

Elevation often becomes an important component in the breeding site selection of forest birds because it may affect individual fitness. To understand how the threatened fairy pitta (Pitta nympha Temminck & Schlegel) selects a particular elevation...

Tree ring eccentricity was used to reconstruct landslide activity in the last 138 years in the Urbas landslide located at Potoška planina in the NW part of the Karavanke Mountains, Slovenia. The research was based on the dendrochronological sa...

Rising temperatures and changes in precipitation may affect plant responses, and mountainous regions in particular are sensitive to the impacts of climate change. The Santa Catalina Mountains, near Tucson, Arizona, USA, are among the best known Madre...

Soil formation in post-mining sites is crucial for restoring ecosystem function, and soil formation depend on the accumulation of soil organic matter and the development of an active microbial community. In this study, we used substrate-induced respi...

Forest ecosystems in an ecotone and their dynamics to climate change are growing ecological and environmental concerns. Phenology is one of the most critical biological indicators of climate change impacts on forest dynamics. In this study, we estima...

In nearly 600 randomly selected forest stands including elms (Ulmus spp.), we conducted field research to identify them to species level and to find trees showing symptoms of Dutch elm disease (DED). The presented data show that all the 3 native elms...

Changes in the light availability in forests generated by diversified retention patterns (e.g., clear cut, partial harvest) have been shown to strongly filter the plant species present. Modified soil microsite conditions due to post-harvest site prep...

Understory vegetation hosts high biodiversity and plays a critical role in the ecosystem processes of boreal forests. However, the drivers of understory plant diversity in this high-latitude ecosystem remain uncertain. To investigate the influences o...

Dynamic monitoring of carbon storage in forests resources is important for tracking ecosystem functionalities and climate change impacts. In this study, we used multi-year Landsat data combined with a Random Forest (RF) algorithm to estimate the fore...

The response of vegetation to climate change is of special interest in regions where rapid warming is coupled with moisture deficit. This raises the question of the limits in plants’ acclimation ability and the consequent shifts of the vegetati...

Scyphiphora hydrophyllacea Gaertn. f. (Rubiaceae) is an endangered mangrove species found in China, and its only known location is in Hainan Island. Previous studies conducted on S. hydrophyllaceae have mainly focused on its location, biological char...

Shelterbelt systems play pivotal roles in providing goods and services to the rural community and the society at large, but phosphorus (P) cycling in shelterbelt systems is poorly studied, while P cycling and availability would be linked to the ecolo...

In the Pacific Northwest, the use of forest vegetation management (FVM) and seedling stock type selection are important tools to ensure seedling establishment according to organizational objectives and state laws. Individually, these two reforestatio...