Kazdagi (Mt. Ida) forms the natural border between the provinces of Canakkale and Balikesirin northwestern Turkey. The highest peak (Karatas Hill) of this mountain is 1774 m. Kazdagi was declared a National Park in 1994 because of its rich plant cover. Its importance is mainly derived from the presence of a restricted zone of Abies nordmanniana ssp. equi-trojani forest as well as for its natura...

A better understanding of the mechanisms controlling the magnitude and sign of carbon components in tropical forest ecosystems is important for reliable estimation of this important regional component of the global carbon cycle. We used the JULES vegetation model to simulate all components of the carbon balance at six sites along an Andes-Amazon transect across Peru and Brazil and compared the ...

Holocene vegetational dynamics along the prairie-forest border of Minnesota were first documented in McAndrews' classic work. Despite numerous subsequent paleo-studies, a number of questions remain unanswered about the vegetation history of the region. Here, pollen, stable-isotope, mineral, and charcoal data are described from three lakes near McAndrews' sites. These data were compared with oth...

Phytoliths represent one of the few available altitudinal vegetation proxies for mountain ecosystems. This study analyzed 41 topsoil phytolith samples collected from five altitudinal zones in the southern Himalaya as far as, and beyond, the timberline, from tropical forest (up to 1,000 m a.s.l.) to subtropical forest (1,000-2,000 m a.s.l.), to temperate forest (2,000-3,000 m a.s.l.), to subalpi...

Digital data collected by Landsat II satellite were used to produce a vegetation map of Mt Tarawera, Rotorua, New Zealand. The accuracy of this map, when checked in the field, varied for each class of vegetation; low stature and cover vegetation were more reliably classified than tall forest. The average probability of a resolution unit being correctly classified (with 95% confidence limits) wa...

Previous studies demonstrate that old-growth forest remnants and vegetation regenerating after anthropogenic disturbance provide habitat for birds in a human modified coastal dune forest landscape in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. However, occurrence does not ensure persistence. Based on a 13-year monitoring database we calculated population trends for 37 bird species and general trends ...

Apparent changes in vegetation distribution, fire, and other disturbance regimes throughout western North America have prompted investigations of the relative importance of human activities and climate change as potential causal mechanisms. Assessing the effects of Euro-American settlement is difficult because climate changes occur on multi-decadal to centennial time scales and require longer t...

Geohistorical records reveal the long-term impacts of climate change on ecosystem structure. A 5-myr record of mammalian faunas from floodplain ecosystems of South Asia shows substantial change in species richness and ecological structure in relation to vegetation change as documented by stable isotopes of C and O from paleosols. Between 8.5 and 6.0 Ma, C(4) savannah replaced C(3) forest and wo...

The vegetation structure and composition, and the activities of kokako were studied intensively in five home ranges in Puketi Forest to determine the significance of kauri to kokako, and the likely impacts of logging and browsing mammals upon kokako. Typically, kokako home ranges in Puketi Forest were situated mainly in dissected terrain and contained a great diversity of vegetation types and s...

Estimation of forest aboveground biomass is critical for regional carbon policies and sustainable forest management. Passive optical remote sensing and active microwave remote sensing both play an important role in the monitoring of forest biomass. However, optical spectral reflectance is saturated in relatively dense vegetation areas, and microwave backscattering is significantly influenced by...