Forest ecosystems play an important role for the conservation of biodiversity, and for the protection of ecological processes. The Po plain woodlands which once covered the whole Plain, today are reduced in isolated highly threatened remnants by modern intensive agriculture. These close to natural floodplain forests are one of the most scarce and endangered ecosystems in Europe. Saproxylic spec...

Increasing urbanisation and industrialisation have led to a dramatic reduction in forest area, and now only culturally protected remnants of natural forests and some new plantations remain in most areas of the north of Iran. To investigate the status of the chemical and physical characteristics of soil under these remnant forests and assess the possible impacts of reforestation on soil properti...

Halton A. Peters* Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA *Correspondence: E-mail: hpeters@globalecology. stanford.edu Abstract Density-dependent mortality has long been posited as a possible mechanism for the regulation of tropical forest tree density. Despite numerous experimental and phenomenological investigations, the extent to which such mechanisms ...

Natural habitats have the ability to protect coastal communities against the impacts of waves and storms, yet it is unclear how different habitats complement each other to reduce those impacts. Here, we investigate the individual and combined coastal protection services supplied by live corals on reefs, seagrass meadows, and mangrove forests during both non-storm and storm conditions, and under...

Pakistan is seriously confronted by many complex and difficult environmental challenges related to air, water, soil, forests and food including issues such as climate change. The close link between environment and health is neither well understood nor appreciated. The annual cost of environmental degradation in Pakistan has been estimated to be around US $4.0 billion orat least 6% of the countr...

The coastal areas of Bangladesh have a high cyclone frequency, and the protection from cyclone damage afforded by the natural mangrove forests of the Sundarbans, led the Forest Department in 1966 to initiate a mangrove afforestation program. These initial plantings proved highly successful in protecting and stabilizing coastal areas, and led to a largescale mangrove afforestation initiative. To...

Over the past 20 years, the focus of forest science on air pollution has moved from forest decline to a holistic framework of forest health, and from the effects on forest production to the ecosystem services provided by forest ecosystems. Hence, future research should focus on the interacting factorial impacts and resulting antagonistic and synergistic responses of forest trees and ecosystems....

The herb layer of temperate forests contributes to long-term forest ecosystem functioning and provisioning services. Therefore, a thorough understanding its dynamics in the face environmental changes is essential. This paper focuses on species functional diversity riparian verify how these two community components changed over time under strict protection. understory vegetation was surveyed 42 ...