An historical generalization about forest cover change in which rapid deforestation gives way over time to forest restoration is called "the forest transition." Prior research on the forest transition leaves three important questions unanswered: (1) How does forest loss influence an individual landowner's incentives to reforest? (2) How does the forest recovery rate affect the likelihood of for...

The 90,674 wildland fires that burned 2.9 million ha at an estimated suppression cost of $1.6 billion in the United States during the 2000 fire season demonstrated that forest fuel loading has become a hazard to life, property, and ecosystem health as a result of past fire exclusion policies and practices. The fire regime at any given location in these regions is a result of complex interaction...

With the financial crises ongoing in Greece and Venezuela, sovereign debt crises have become more and more prominent in the public eye. Thus, it has become important to be able to predict when nations will enter such debt crises. We collected publicly available data in order to train models to predict, given a nation’s economic status in one year, whether they would be in a debt crisis the next...

We consider the random walk among random conductances on Z. We assume that the conductances are independent, identically distributed and uniformly bounded away from 0 and infinity. We obtain a quantitative version of the central limit theorem for this random walk, which takes the form of a Berry-Esseen estimate with speed t−1/10 for d 6 2, and speed t−1/5 for d > 3, up to logarithmic corrections.

In this work we study variable-significance in classification using the Random Forest proximity matrix and local Importance matrix. We use the proximity m atrix t o g roup t he s amples acr oss a number of c lusters a nd use t hese clusters to s tratify th e importance of a variable. We apply t his a pproach t o a cardiovascular g enotype d ataset f or sample classification b ased o n coronary ...

Financial crime is a rampant but hidden threat. In spite of this, predictive policing systems disproportionately target “street crime” rather than white collar crime. This paper presents the White Collar Crime Early Warning System (WCCEWS), a white collar crime predictive model that uses random forest classifiers to identify high risk zones for incidents of financial crime.

Canopy gaps are one of the most important structural features of forest ecosystems, and studying of them can have useful results and implications for forest management. The aim of this study is investigation of characteristics and regeneration within canopy gaps in an intact beech stand in the Shastkalateh Experimental Forest of Hyrcanian region, north of Iran. All canopy gaps and related fores...

In the Shafaroud forest, logging operation is generally performed by using selective cutting methods. Chainsaw and cable skidder are two main forest machines for harvesting of this forest. However, forest harvesting operations result in serious residual stand damage during felling, winching and skidding operations in this forest. Residual stand damage resulting from selective cutting was asses...