Recent interest in using forest residues and small-diameter material for biofuels is generating a renewed focus on harvesting impacts and forest sustainability. The rich legacy of research from whole-tree harvesting studies can be examined in light of this interest. Although this research largely focused on consequences for forest productivity, in particular carbon and nutrient pools, it also h...

Major fluxes of sulphur and dissolved inorganic nitrogen were estimated in Central European mountain ecosystems of the Bohemian Forest (forest lakes) and Tatra Mountains (alpine lakes) over the industrial period. Sulphur outputs from these ecosystems were comparable to inputs during a period of relatively stable atmospheric deposition (10-35 mmol m-2 yr-1) around the 1930s. Atmospheric inputs o...

Climate change affects forests both directly and indirectly through disturbances. Disturbances are a natural and integral part of forest ecosystems, and climate change can alter these natural interactions. When disturbances exceed their natural range of variation, the change in forest structure and function may be extreme. Each disturbance affects forests differently. Some disturbances have tig...

The forest sector represents a large source of income for Canadians. In 2013, the forest sector contributed $19.2 billion or 1.25% of Canada’s GDP [1]. Harvested wood products (HWPs), which are manufactured using wood harvested from forests, have also made headlines recently, with the world’s tallest wood building at 18 storeys having completed construction at the University of British Columbia...

A simple dynamic model relating forest area in a region, its contribution to dry season precipitation and the effect on its own establishment was developed. The model equation shows hysteresis between forest and savannas as a function of imported dry season precipitation. Regions are either dominated by forests or savannas, with each ecosystem showing stability despite changes in imported dry s...

Focusing primarily on boreal forest ecosystems, this talk examines the role of stand-replacing disturbances in a changing climate and poses the hypotheses that: 1) Present and near-term future carbon budgets at the forest scale are constrained by the historical and present disturbance regime; 2) Changes in these regimes due to global change has a larger near-term impact on boreal forest carbon ...

Although trifluoroacetate (TFA), a breakdown product of chlorofluorocarbon replacements, is being dispersed widely within the biosphere, its ecological fate is largely unknown. TFA was added experimentally to an upland, northern hardwood forest and to a small forest wetland ecosystem within the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire. Inputs of TFA were not transported conservatively...

Many contemporary ecosystems are likely to be affected by multiple environmental drivers, complicating efforts to predict future changes in those ecosystems. We studied long-term changes (1980–2012) in forest dynamics and liana (woody vine) abundance and biomass in fragmented and intact forests of the central Amazon. We did so by contrasting trends in 33 permanent 1-ha plots near forest edges (...

The use of the newest methods of airborne laser scanning integrated with hyper-spectral satellite systems, provides principally new opportunities for remote sensing of forest cover. High efficiency of laser scanning (up to 100 thousand measurements per second) in combination with sub-meter spatial resolution, high accuracy of a tree stands’ structural parameters detection as well as three-dimen...

Doctor Ingeniero de Montes, ICONA Forest Fire Section, Madrid Spain. Abstract: Forest fuels in the Mediterranean ecosystems of Spain are characterized by generalized pyrophytism and large accumulations of woody shrub vegetation. The Forest Service prepared in 1978 a fuel management plan and a program of surveys including: A study on the vegetation's evolution in forests after fires; the experim...