[1] The character and quantity of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) were studied in nine small boreal streams and adjacent soils during two years, with focus on the spring snowmelt period. The streams cover a forest-wetland gradient, spanning from 0% to 69% wetland coverage. Lower values of the absorbance ratio measured at 254 nm and 365 nm (A254/A365), in both soil plots and streams, indicated th...

In a recent issue of PNAS, Hansen et al. (1) did an excellent job of arguing for the need for a more consistent data set to investigate changes in global forest cover. The indicator they chose, gross forest cover loss (GFCL), marks an improvement both in reproducibility and comparability. However, it does so by using data that the authors themselves state “captures only part of the global fores...

The ‘Community Forestry Program’ has been considered successful in improving the environmental situation in the hills of Nepal by enhancing the vegetation coverage of degraded sites and by improving the supply of forest products to farmers. The restoration measures are considered sustainable if the ecosystems are self-supporting and resilient against perturbation. A community forest (CF) in the...

Forest fires cost millions of dollars in damages and claim many human lives every year. Apart from preventive measures, early detection and suppression of fires is the only way to minimize the damages and casualties. We present the design and evaluation of a wireless sensor network for early detection of forest fires. We first present the key aspects in modeling forest fires. We do this by anal...

Many farm businesses are managed as one-man shows. Little financial information and almost none of the business decision-making functions are shared with others in the business or the family. There is seldom a plan for management succession or for developing backup management. Thus, when something happens to the only decision maker, many firms either fail or experience a traumatic adjustment pr...

Recently airborne Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) has emerged as a highly accurate remote sensing modality to be used in operational scale forest inventories. Inventories conducted with the help of LiDAR are most often model-based, i.e. they use variables derived from LiDAR point clouds as the predictive variables that are to be calibrated using field plots. The measurement of the necessary...

Vertical structure is important for understanding forest environment, yet difficult to characterize, especially in temperate heterogeneous forests where the structure is complex. This study used data from a small-footprint airborne laser scanning (ALS) to estimate vegetation coverage in four stratum ranges in a warm temperate forest in Japan: >12 m, 8 12 m, 4 8 m, and 0 4 m in height. Field dat...