Forest structure and anthropogenic disturbances regulate plant invasion in urban forests

Anthropogenic disturbances infiltrate forest fragments.

In the years after Edward O. Wilson and Robert MacArthur’s seminal book, The Theory of Island Biogeography (1), which laid the foundations for understanding species diversity and extinction rates in isolated habitats, was published in 1967, a flurry of papers erupted on the effect of fragmentation in tropical rainforests. The big question at that time was whether it would be more advisable to p...

Ephemeral disturbances have long-lasting impacts on forest invasion dynamics.

Ephemeral disturbances are common in many systems. Often, these brief events are assumed to be a nuisance with little long-term ecological impact. We quantified the impact of the ephemeral forest disturbance caused by gypsy moth canopy defoliation on exotic plant invasion in eight hardwood forests in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, USA. Six years following the gypsy moth distur...

Modeling Anthropogenic Fire Occurrence in the Boreal Forest of China Using Logistic Regression and Random Forests

Frequent and intense anthropogenic fires present meaningful challenges to forest management in the boreal forest of China. Understanding the underlying drivers of human-caused fire occurrence is crucial for making effective and scientifically-based forest fire management plans. In this study, we applied logistic regression (LR) and Random Forests (RF) to identify important biophysical and anthr...

Climate and soil drive forest structure in Bolivian lowland forests

Climate is one of the most important factors determining variation in forest structure, but whether soils have independent effects is less clear. We evaluate how climate and soil independently affect forest structure, using 89 200 stems ≥ 10 cm dbh from 220 1-ha permanent plots distributed along environmental gradients in lowland Bolivia. Fifteen forest structural variables, related to vertical...

Invasion by Fallopia spp. in a French upland region is related to anthropogenic disturbances