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...

Grid-based inventories of 1,924 deciduous forests plots in Germany and 4,775 in Romania were used to investigate tree species composition as affected by browsing and grazing under different forest management (rotation forestry, selectively cut forest, protected forest). At regional scale, the loss of tree species in the dominant layer was between 52 to 67% in Germany and of 10 to 30% in Romania...

An accurate estimation of the leaf area index (LAI) by satellite remote sensing is essential for studying the spatial variation of ecosystem structure. The goal of this study was to estimate the spatial variation of LAI over a forested catchment in a mountainous landscape (ca. 60 km2) in central Japan. We used a simple model to estimate LAI using spectral reflectance by adapting the Monsi-Saeki...

Let A be a non empty set, let B be a set, let B1 be a set, and let y1 be a function from B1 into A. Let us assume that B1 ⊆ B. The functor cylinder0(A,B,B1, y1) yields a non empty subset of A B and is defined by: (Def. 1) cylinder0(A,B,B1, y1) = {y : B → A: y B1 = y1}. Let A be a non empty set and let B be a set. A non empty subset of AB is said to be a thin cylinder of A and B if: (Def. 2) The...

Spring phenology is thought to exert a major influence on the carbon (C) balance of temperate and boreal ecosystems. We investigated this hypothesis using four spring onset phenological indicators in conjunction with surface-atmosphere CO(2) exchange data from the conifer-dominated Howland Forest and deciduous-dominated Harvard Forest AmeriFlux sites. All phenological measures, including CO(2) ...

The b-amyloid peptide (Ab) is a major component of the Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-associated senile plaques and is generated by sequential cleavage of the b-amyloid precursor protein (APP) by b-secretase and g-secretase. Since BACE1 initiates Ab generation it represents a valuable target to interfere with Ab production and treatment of AD. While the enzymatic activity of BACE1 resides in the extr...