Climate change has been identified as the primary threat to the integrity and functioning of ecosystems in this century, although there is still much uncertainty about its effects and the degree of vulnerability for different ecosystems to this threat. Here we propose a new methodological approach capable of measuring and mapping the resilience of terrestrial ecosystems at large scales based on...

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster caused serious radiocesium (137Cs) contamination of forest ecosystems over a wide area. Forest-floor organic layers play a key role in controlling the overall bioavailability of 137Cs in forest ecosystems; however, there is still an insufficient understanding of how forest types influence the retention capability of 137Cs in organic layers in J...

Bytnerowicz, Andrzej; Arbaugh, Michael J.; Schilling, Susan L., technical coordinators. 1998. Proceedings of the international symposium on air pollution and climate change effects on forest ecosystems; 1996 February 5-9; Riverside, CA. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-166. Albany, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; 332 p. The purpose of the Internati...

Quantification of the downed woody materials that comprise forest fuels has gained importance in Caribbean forest ecosystems due to the increasing incidence and severity of wildfires on island ecosystems. Because large-scale assessments of forest fuels have rarely been conducted for these ecosystems, forest fuels were assessed at 121 US Department of Agriculture forest service inventory plots o...

forest roads are directions in natural habitats that used to transport wood products, secondary forest products and recreation. constructing forest roads causes trees clearing with specified width thus lead to direct or indirect changes in forest ecosystems and forest environment. this study aims to assess the changes of diversity and richness indices in main and secondary forest roads in a par...

Boreal forest and tundra are the major ecosystems in the northern high latitudes in which a large amount of carbon is stored. These ecosystems are nitrogen-limited due to slow mineralization rate of the soil organic nitrogen. Recently, abundant field studies have found that organic nitrogen is another important nitrogen supply for boreal forest and tundra ecosystems. In this study, we incorpora...

The fungal community of the forest floor was examined as the cause of previously reported increases in soil organic matter due to experimental N deposition in ecosystems producing predominantly high-lignin litter, and the opposite response in ecosystems producing low-lignin litter. The mechanism proposed to explain this phenomenon was that white-rot basidiomycetes are more important in the degr...