We investigated how legal logging history and recent illegal logging affected forest bird community structure in Ghana. Ghanaian forests belong to West Africa’s highly fragmented Upper Guinea rain forests, part of a global priority ‘‘biodiversity hotspot’’ under intense pressure from anthropogenic degradation. Between 1995 and 2010, officially-reported legal logging intensities increased up to ...

Under the prevailing variable natural conditions nomadic pastoralism was the most suitable form of land use in Mongolia and the neighboring countries in the past. Furthermore, small areas were used for agriculture in some regions. Therefore, anthropogenic influence was present throughout history. In the forest steppe zone this led to the disappearance of forest sites which then gave way to mead...

A series of functional variables, including biomass and hymenial area, were obtained for more than 4800 individual macrofungal sporocarps and correlated with a set of ecological parameters characterizing soil, climate and forest structure in four different forest types of Costa Rica. The idea behind this project was to document macrofungi over a three-year period with the objective of generatin...

Tropical forest change is driven by demand in distant markets. Equally, investments in tropical forest landscapes by capital originating from distant emerging economies are on the rise. Understanding how forest outcomes vary by investment source is therefore becoming increasingly important. We empirically evaluate the relationship between investment source and deforestation from 2000 to 2010 in...

Recently, the forest observation using the spaceborne sensor becomes a top issue in the carbon monitoring. Covering more than 20% of the global terrestrial areas, forests are rapidly decreasing, corresponding to 20% carbon dioxide release from the land. Deforestation and forest degradation mainly occurred in the developing country. L-band SAR is sensitive for monitoring the forest biomass, fore...

Pentachlorophenol (PCP) is globally dispersed and contamination of soil with this biocide adversely affects its functional biodiversity, particularly of fungi - key colonizers. Their functional role as a community is poorly understood, although a few pathways have been already elucidated in pure cultures. This constitutes here our main challenge - elucidate how fungi influence the pollutant mit...

Environmental degradation is one of the major issues confronting many governments around the world. This problem is acute in developing countries where the lack of proper regulatory enforcement and ineffective monitoring mechanisms due to weak legislation have led to serious environmental degradation in the form of soil, air, water pollution, degradation of native and planted vegetation and sca...

It is well-known that forests play a vital role in maintaining biodiversity and the health of ecosystems across the Earth. This important ecological resource is under threat from both anthropogenic and biogenic pressures, ranging from insect infestations to commercial logging. Detecting, quantifying and reporting the magnitude of forest degradation are therefore critical to efforts towards mini...