Carbon stock estimates based on land cover type are critical for informing climate change assessment and landscape management, but field and theoretical evidence indicates that forest fragmentation reduces the amount of carbon stored at forest edges. Here, using remotely sensed pantropical biomass and land cover data sets, we estimate that biomass within the first 500 m of the forest edge is on...

investigation on structure and dynamics of natural forest ecosystems is an important issue for silvicultural decisions. the aim of this study is to analysis dynamics and structure of a beech stand during 5-year period in the shast kalateh forest in the caspian region, north of iran. data were collected from a 16.9ha permanent research plot established in a natural unlogged stand in 2006. all li...

Experiments with coupled atmosphere/biosphere models indicate that land degradation leads to a reduction in rainfall, evapotranspiration, soil moisture and runoff, and an increase in surface temperature and near surface winds. This talk discusses studies that have investigated the feedback of degradation in forest and other ecosystems on regional climate in the Sahel, the central U.S., South Am...

the purpose of this study was to investigate the impacts of forest-based activities on the conditions of the ganaveh woodland in the southern zagros, iran, and to suggest strategies for improving the implementation of forest resource management plans. woodland inventory data was gathered in 2003, accompanied with data from interviews in 2008, were used in this study. the results show that there...

Forest loss and degradation in the tropics contribute 6–17% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Protected areas cover 217.2 million ha (19.6%) of the world’s humid tropical forests and contain c. 70.3 petagrams of carbon (Pg C) in biomass and soil to 1 m depth. Between 2000 and 2005, we estimate that 1.75 million ha of forest were lost from protected areas in humid tropical forests, causing the em...

Efforts to mitigate climate change through the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) depend on mapping and monitoring of tropical forest carbon stocks and emissions over large geographic areas. With a new integrated use of satellite imaging, airborne light detection and ranging, and field plots, we mapped aboveground carbon stocks and emissions at 0.1-ha resolution over 4....

The Brazilian Atlantic Forest hosts one of the world's most diverse and threatened tropical forest biota. In many ways, its history of degradation describes the fate experienced by tropical forests around the world. After five centuries of human expansion, most Atlantic Forest landscapes are archipelagos of small forest fragments surrounded by open-habitat matrices. This 'natural laboratory' ha...

Tropical forests are major contributors to the terrestrial global carbon pool, but this pool is being reduced via deforestation and forest degradation. Relatively few studies have assessed carbon storage in degraded tropical forests. We sampled 37,000 m(2) of intact rainforest, degraded rainforest and sclerophyll forest across the greater Wet Tropics bioregion of northeast Australia. We compare...

Seed dispersal governs the distribution of plant propagules in the landscape and hence forms the template on which density-dependent processes act. Dispersal is therefore a vital component of many species coexistence and forest dynamics models and is of applied value in understanding forest regeneration. Research on the processes that facilitate forest regeneration and restoration is given furt...

Community forest management (CFM) is identified by many actors as a core strategy for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD+). Others however see REDD+ as a danger to CFM. In response to these contrasting views, we carried out a systematic review of CFM case studies to look at CFM’s potential role in achieving forest carbon benefits and socia...