the aim of this study was to develop an optimal sustainable forest plantation based on goal programming and analytic hierarchy process (ahp) methods. this study was carried out in guilan province, north of iran. first of all, the ecological capability of the study area for plantation establishment/maintenance was evaluated based on multi-factor method and specific ecological makhdoum model by m...

Pilot studies are often used to design short-term research projects and long-term ecological monitoring programs, but data are sometimes discarded when they do not match the eventual survey design. Bayesian hierarchical modeling provides a convenient framework for integrating multiple data sources while explicitly separating sample variation into observation and ecological state processes. Such...

Even if the establishment of nature reserves is to date a reality and the increase of protected areas is going to grow year after year, monitoring programs aiming to assess the effectiveness of the established protected areas for biodiversity conservation are still needed. That is the case for the Natura 2000 network in Europe, for which monitoring methods and programs are not yet well-establis...

Sacred forest groves in the Western Ghats of India are small fragments of tropical forest that have received protection due to religious beliefs and cultural practices. These forest fragments are an example of community-based conservation and they serve as refugia for many forest-dwelling species in otherwise highly anthropogenic tropical forest-agriculture landscapes of the Indian Western Ghat...

Permanent plots in indigenous forests administered by the Department of Conservation's West Coast Conservancy in the National Vegetation Survey (NVS) database were analysed to show which forest types were adequately sampled according to identifiable forest types, and within each type, in space and in time. From 404 permanent forest plots considered in analysis, eight forest types were determine...

Urban trees are a dominant natural element in cities; they provide important ecosystem services to urban citizens and help urban areas adapt to climate change. Many rationales have been proposed to provide a purpose for urban forest management, some of which have been ineffective in addressing important ecological and social management themes. Among these rationales we find a values-based persp...

© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org I is widely recognized that land conversion, hunting, forest harvesting, and other human influences are depleting biodiversity. Yet the specific mechanisms through which human activities affect species at particular locations remain poorly characterized. This lack of understanding limits our ability to attribute changes in biodivers...