Intensive forest-management practices have been shown to greatly increase the growth rates of southern pines. A joint study was undertaken to evaluate the wood and pulp quality from fast-grown 14,year-old loblolly pine from the Piedmont and 17-year-old slash pine from the Coastal Plain. The properties were compared to 24-year-old plantation-grown controls. Three sets of chip samples, sawmill re...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The importance of superficial root mats inside the forest floor for the nutrition of Amazonian rain forests has been extensively investigated. The present study was aimed at assessing the function of a root mat adherent to decomposing organic material observed in Eucalyptus plantations. METHODS The development of the root mat was studied through micromorphological observat...

The objectives of the study were to measure the effects of an experimental flood on : (1) leaf litter production by the riparian forest; (2) leaf decomposition; and (3) the amount of forest floot organic matter. The study area is located at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, approximately 160 km south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Experimental and reference study sites of about 3·1 ha we...

Coffee agroecosystems have recently undergone a dramatic intensification in Colombia, a megadiverse country, especially in terms of the nature of shade cover. We tested for changes in the composition, ecological associations, and diversity of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) along a gradient of intensification of coffee production in the Colombian Andes. We surveyed 16 farms in two regions, class...

Termites constitute a considerable fraction of the animal biomass in tropical forest, but little quantitative data are available that indicates their importance in the processes of wood decomposition. This study evaluated the participation of Nasutitermes corniger (Motschulsky) (Isoptera: Termitidae), N. ephratae (Holmgren), and N. macrocephalus (Silvestri) in the consumption of the wood litter...

Our understanding of how saprotrophic and mycorrhizal fungi interact to re-circulate carbon and nutrients from plant litter and soil organic matter is limited by poor understanding of their spatiotemporal dynamics. In order to investigate how different functional groups of fungi contribute to carbon and nitrogen cycling at different stages of decomposition, we studied changes in fungal communit...

Slash-and-burn agriculture is a sequence of interactions between farmers and ecosystems, which includes forest, cropping, fallow, and cropping after fallow. In sampling across this sequence in Pucallpa, Peru, 235 plant species were recorded in the forest, of which 143 were not found in any successive land use. However, plants not occurring in the forest colonized fields and fallow. In total, 59...

Forest fragmentation affects the heterogeneity of accumulated fuels by increasing the diversity of forest types and by increasing forest edges. This heterogeneity has implications in how we manage fuels, fire, and forests. Understanding the relative importance of fragmentation on woody biomass within a single climatic regime, and along climatic gradients, will improve our ability to manage fore...

The problems of the environmental management in river basins are treated as periphery problems. Though, these areas are often included in great reserves of natural resources of the nation, their contribution to the main land is quite often in terms of forest, water, wildlife, tourism and leisure industries. Forest and forest eco-systems of north-east India in general and Manipur in particular, ...

Many forest management treatments are directly aimed at maintaining or enhancing forest productivity. There may also be secondary effects that detract from this goal. We discuss three case studies in Washington state in which several mechanisms may have led to adverse secondary impacts. In the first study, pulp and paper (PII) sludges were mixed into soil and growth of Douglas-fir [Pseudotsuga ...