Forests, Volume 9, Issue 1

Tomicus yunnanensis and Tomicus minor have caused serious shoot damage in Yunnan pine forests in the Yunnan Province of China. However, very few remote sensing studies have estimated the shoot damage ratio (SDR). Thus, we used multi-date Landsat sate...

Tropical tree species have evolved under very narrow temperature ranges compared to temperate forest species. Studies suggest that tropical trees may be more vulnerable to continued warming compared to temperate species, as tropical trees have shown...

We examined spatial patterns of post-fire regenerating conifers in a Colorado, USA, dry conifer forest 11–12 years following the reintroduction of mixed-severity fire. We mapped and measured all post-fire regenerating conifers, as well as all other p...

Ring width and wood density variation were studied from pith-to-bark and along the stem in two naturally regenerated stands of Quercus faginea Lam. in Portugal. Ring width was significantly different between sites, in both heartwood and sapwood rings...

Understanding the vulnerability of individual trees to climate requires moving from population to individual level. This study evaluates individual tree response in a mixed forest by assessing how size and neighbourhood density modulated growth respo...

Extensive studies on hydrological responses to forest change have been published for centuries, yet partitioning the hydrological effects of forest change, climate variability and other factors in a large watershed remains a challenge. In this study,...

Branch development in the lower part of stem is critical to both early stem growth and wood quality of the most valuable section of tree, and its regulation through planting density has always been greatly concerned. Here the effect of planting densi...

The mixed Cunninghamia lanceolata (Lamb.) Hook., Pinus massoniana Lamb., and hardwood forest in southeastern China is a major assemblage in natural secondary forests, and of national and international importance in terms of both timber and ecosystem...

Tropical deforestation and forest degradation are serious problems for the global environment; as a result, sustainable forest management and forest certification have become important. In this study, using a choice experiment, we investigated, on th...

Invasive tree species cause increasing damage to the environment and local economies. Previous studies have seldom treated the presence and abundance of invasive species as different phenomena. Using Classification and Regression Trees (CART) analysi...

Net primary productivity (NPP) is a key component in the terrestrial ecosystem carbon cycle, and it varies according to stand age and site class index (SCI) for different forest types. Here we report an improved method for describing the relationship...

Fine roots play a prominent role in forest carbon flux, nutrient and water acquisition; however, information on fine roots remains scarce due to the limitation of measuring methods. In this study, a nested regression method was used to estimate the b...

Rapid urbanization has changed the structure and function of natural ecosystems, especially floodplain ecosystems in SE Asia. The ecological structure of vegetation stands and the usefulness of satellite images was investigated to characterize a dist...

Invasive insect pests are a common disturbance in temperate forests, but their effects on belowground processes in these ecosystems are poorly understood. This study examined how aboveground disturbance might impact short-term soil carbon flux in a f...

Groundwater is a major driving force for plant community distribution in arid areas worldwide. Although it is well known that groundwater has a significant impact on soil and vegetation, there is little information on how groundwater depth affects so...

Structural complexity and local biodiversity of species-rich tropical forests can be characterized by their spatial patterns, which contribute to species intra- and interspecific interactions. Aiming to describe spatial patterns of species at fine sp...

Co-occurring species may adopt different water-use strategies to adapt to limited soil water. In Jiuzhaigou Valley, a continuous decline in soil water after an initial recharge from the thawing of snow and frozen soil in early spring was observed, bu...

Fragrant rosewood (Dalbergia odorifera T.C. Chen) is a highly-valued species suffering from vulnerability due to over-development for wood and medicine. In this study, Fragrant rosewood seedlings were cultured with chitosan oligosaccharide (CO) addit...

Bark microrelief (BM), or the spatial patterning of bark texture, is an important bark characteristic shown to significantly affect the ecophysiological functioning of forest ecosystems. BM influences bark micrometeorological conditions and stemflow...

Non-native invasive species frequently appear in urban and non-urban ecosystems and may become a threat to biodiversity. Some of these newcomers are introduced accidentally, and others are introduced through a sequence of events caused by conscious h...

The alien invasive pathogen Hymenoscyphus fraxineus causes large-scale decline of European ash (Fraxinus excelsior). We assessed ash dieback in Germany and identified factors that were associated with this disease. Our assessment was based on a 2015...

The analysis of past and present patterns of agrarian mountain areas allows researchers to characterize the influence of landscape heterogeneity on biodiversity, cultural heritage, and forest fire hazard. This process was mapped, quantified, and desc...

Vegetative leaf area is a critical input to models that simulate human and ecosystem exposure to atmospheric pollutants. Leaf area index (LAI) can be measured in the field or numerically simulated, but all contain some inherent uncertainty that is pa...

Using lidar for large-scale forest management can improve operational and management decisions. Using multi-temporal lidar sampling and remeasured field inventory data collected from 78 plots in the Panther Creek Watershed, Oregon, USA, we evaluated...

The contributions of green infrastructure (GI) to human well-being have been widely recognised; however, pathways for its systematic implementation are missing. Local governments can play a crucial role in the conservation of GI, and a formal recogni...

Peer review is an essential part in the publication process, ensuring that Forests maintains high quality standards for its published papers. In 2017, a total of 493 papers were published in the journal.[...]

An increase in vegetation greenness can improve ecosystem productivity, but also reduce the water supply, creating the potential for conflicting water demands between ecosystems and humans. This problem has been well-assessed and is most evident in d...

We analyze economic perspectives of forest adaptation to risk attributes, caused mostly by climate change. We construct a database with 89 systematically chosen articles, dealing simultaneously with climate, adaptation, risk and economy. We classify...

Identifying the drivers of community assembly has long been a central goal in ecology, and the development of functional diversity indices has provided a new way of detecting the influence of environmental gradients on biotic communities. For an old-...

Environmental conditions and silviculture fundamentally alter the metabolism of individual trees and, therefore, need to be studied at that scale. However, changes in forest biomass density (Mg C ha⁻¹) may be decoupled from changes in growth (kg C ye...

Forest degradation due to land use change is a severe problem in Ethiopian Afromontane Forests. We investigated such degradation effects by comparing degraded agricultural land (previously covered with forest) with neighboring natural forests, 40 to...

Density is an important wood mechanical property and an indicator of xylem architecture and hydraulic conductivity. It can be influenced by forest management and climate. We studied the impact of thinning and climate variables on annual stem radial g...

In Iceland and Denmark, there is an interest in planting Abies lasiocarpa for use as Christmas trees. To search for usable genetic material for both countries, 26 provenances of subalpine fir, covering most of its natural range, were planted in easte...

To facilitate the reintroduction of five native late-successional Taiwanese Fagaceae species into Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica (D.) Don) plantations, we experimented with methods to alleviate their establishment limitations. We tested differe...

We measured total soil CO₂ efflux (R_S) and efflux from the forest floor layers (R_FF) in red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) stands of different ages to examine relationships between stand age and belowground C cycling. Soil temperature and R_S were often l...

In mountain forests of Central Europe, storm and snow breakage as well as bark beetles are the prevailing major disturbances. The complex interrelatedness between climate, disturbance agents, and forest management increases the need for an integrativ...

Earlier snowmelt changes spring stress exposure and growing-season length, possibly causing shifts in plant species dominance. If such shifts involve trees, this may lead to changes in treeline position. We hypothesized that earlier snowmelt would ne...

This study compares the quality of wood from two distinct sites in the Czech Republic—from former afforested agricultural land and forest land. We compared the properties of Norway spruce wood (Picea abies Karst.) and Scots pine wood (Pinus sylvestri...

Air warming (TC: control; TW: +3 °C) and precipitation manipulation (PC: control; PD: −30%; PI: +30%) were established to examine effects of these treatments on fine root production (FRP), fine root mortality (FRM), and total root (coarse and fine ro...

Both the establishment of sustainable forestry practices and the improvement of commercially grown trees require better understanding of mechanisms used by forest trees to combat microbial pathogens. We investigated the contribution of a gene encodin...

Litter fungal communities and their ligninolytic enzyme activities (laccase, Mn-peroxidase, and lignin-peroxidase) play a vital role in forest biogeochemical cycles by breaking down plant cell wall polymers, including recalcitrant lignin. However, li...

Global climate change is likely to change precipitation patterns with consequences for tree water use and growth in semi-arid areas. However, little is known about the effects of variability in precipitation on growth- and water-related physiological...

The patchy distribution of high-Andean treeline forests has provoked discussion about the relative importance of anthropogenic and climatic causes of this pattern, both of which vary with topography. We aimed to understand the topographic controls on...

Identifying the factors that influence the climate sensitivity of treeline species is critical to understanding carbon sequestration, forest dynamics, and conservation in high elevation forest/meadow ecotones. Using tree cores from four sub-alpine co...

Understanding the impact of climate change on range shifts in climatically suitable habitats of tree species is important for national afforestation planning, which can enhance the adaptation of tree plantation to climate change through movement of t...

The objective of this study was to analyze patterns, dynamics and processes of land-use/cover changes in the transboundary Mara River Basin in East Africa. We specifically focused on deforestation and expansion of agriculture in the watershed. The in...

In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of using the Microsoft Kinect and Google Tango frame-based depth sensors for individual tree stem measurements and reconstruction for the purpose of forest inventory. Conventionally field reference data i...