Slash-and-burn agriculture in poor tropical countries is one of the main causes of deforestation, leading to environmental costs and to potential externality effects on lowland agricultural productivity. Under innovative environmental policies, direct conservation payments to farmers are starting to be implemented to induce them to abandon slash-and-burn agriculture as well as the use of forest...

Due to high fire hazard and perceived reductions in forest health, thinning of small diameter trees has become a prevalent management activity particularly in dense stands. Creation of large amounts of logging slash, however, has created large quantities of habitat for bark beetles primarily in the Ips genus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae). Evidence indicates that prior to Euro-American...

One hectare of tropical dry forest in Guanacaste Conservation Area, Cosra Rica was mapped and all trees larger than 10 cm diameter at breast heighr (DBH) identified. The same hectare was sampled for leaf litter and the two data sets, forest and litter, were compared. Dominant and subdominant species of the forest are represented in the leaf litter, whereas rare tree species are highly variable ...

-Slash pine is the premier tree species on many sites throughout the South. Its ease of establishment and early growth, however, has extended its range to many sites where its performance has been less than ideal. For that reason, the acreage and volume of slash pine are declining. Nonetheless, it will continue to be the favored species on many sites where it is the most appropriate and product...

Although the distribution and structure of pinyon-juiper woodlands in the southwestern United States are thought to be the result of historic fluctuations in regional climatic conditions, more recent increases in the areal extent, tree density, soil erosion rates and loss of understory plant diversity are attributed to heavy grazing by domestic livestock and interruption of the natural fire reg...

Litter-induced pulses of nutrient availability could play an important role in the productivity and nutrient cycling of forested ecosystems, especially tropical forests. Tropical forests experience such pulses as a result of wet-dry seasonality and during major climatic events, such as strong El Niños. We hypothesized that (1) an increase in the quantity and quality of litter inputs would stimu...

Soil compaction by machine used in forest harvesting operation caused negative impacts for regeneration and tree growth. This research was intended to analyze the effectiveness of using slash to decrease soil compaction, to analyze soil compaction at various soil depths, and to measure rut depth at soil surface. Valmet 860.1 forwarder was used in this research. Soil compaction was measured thro...

In many tropical regions, slash-and-burn agriculture is considered as a driver of deforestation; the forest is converted into agricultural land by cutting and burning the trees. However, the fields are abandoned after few years because of yield decrease and weed invasion. Consequently, new surfaces are regularly cleared from the primary forest. We propose a reclamation strategy for abandoned fi...

Leaf litter decomposition is the key ecological process that determines the sustainability of managed forest ecosystems, however very few studies hitherto have investigated this process with respect to silvicultural management practices. The aims of the present study were to investigate the effects of forest management practices on leaf litter decomposition rates, nutrient dynamics (C, N, Mg, K...

The total phenol content in decomposing litter not only acts as a crucial litter quality indicator, but is also closely related to litter humification due to its tight absorption to clay particles. However, limited attention has been focused on the total phenol dynamics in foliar litter in relation to forest gaps. Here, the foliar litter of six representative tree species was incubated on the f...