287 Results Found

In the Brazilian Amazon, multiple logging activities are undergoing, involving different actors and interests. They shape a disturbance gradient bound to the intensity and frequency of logging, and forest management techniques. However, until now, fe...

Salvage logging after wind disturbance of a mixed conifer-hardwood forest results in sapling compositional changes but no changes to species diversity six years post-disturbance. Several conceptual frameworks allow for predictions of the effects of f...

Wildfires have nearly become a guaranteed annual event in most western National Forests. Severe fire effects can be mitigated with a goal of minimizing the hydrologic response and promoting soil and vegetation recovery towards the pre-disturbance con...

Dense time series of stripmap RADARSAT-2 data acquired in the Multilook Fine mode were used for detecting and mapping the extent of selective logging operations in the tropical forest area in the northern part of the Republic of the Congo. Due to lim...

Forests are the largest aboveground sink for atmospheric carbon (C), and understanding how they change through time is critical to reduce our C-cycle uncertainties. We investigated a strong decline in Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) fro...

Firewood extraction by mule forwarding is still common in oak coppices in Central and Southern Italy. This is due to the scarce presence of aerial extraction systems such as cable yarders. Considering the importance of forest soil for all ecosystem s...

Post-fire salvage logging (SL) is a common management action that involves the harvesting of burnt trees. As a consequence, a large amount of biological legacies in the form of logs and other coarse woody debris are removed from the post-fire habitat...

Plant communities are sensitive to perturbations and may display alternative recovery pathways depending on disturbance history. In sub-boreal lodgepole pine forests of central interior British Columbia, Canada, fire and logging are two widespread la...

In recent years, Europe has experienced an unexpectedly high frequency of natural disturbances. Private forest owners (PFOs), who manage a significant proportion of European forests and have diverse objectives and approaches to forest management, pla...

Stand-replacing disturbance and post-disturbance salvage-logging influence forest succession in different ways; however, limited knowledge regarding how salvage-logging affects vegetation patterns compared to natural development of forest ecosystems...

Scientific research on reduced-impact logging has been addressed to develop effective approaches and methodologies to limit soil disturbance caused by forest operations. In recent years, the development of soil trafficability maps based on soil wetne...

Natural disturbances are fundamental to forest ecosystem dynamics and have been used for two decades to improve forest management, notably in the boreal forest. Initially based on fire regimes, there is now a need to extend the concept to include oth...

Soil’s water-physical properties support essential soil water retention functions for driving water distribution and availability, which is vital for plant growth and biogeochemical cycling. However, the question concerning how tree composition...

Forest degradation and forest disturbance are distinct yet often conflated concepts, complicating their definition and monitoring. Forest degradation involves interrupted succession and a severe reduction in forest services over time, caused by facto...

Mechanized logging equipment causes considerable soil disturbance, but little information is available regarding thresholds for impacts on soil nematodes—critical members of soil foodwebs which perform important ecological functions. We examine...

Megafires are transforming western boreal forests, and many burned forests are salvage logged, removing more structure from landscapes and delaying forest regeneration. We studied forest-dwelling owls in a post-fire and salvage-logged landscape in ce...

Close-to-nature forestry is a viable option to manage forests that are resilient to the challenges presented by climate change. The new silvicultural schemes necessitate adapting the operational side, posing challenges to productivity and the environ...

A massive insect outbreak in the public forests of central British Columbia (Canada) poses a serious challenge for sustainable forest management planning. Tree mortality caused by natural disturbances has always been a part of wild and managed forest...

This study presents an approach to forest canopy disturbance monitoring in evergreen forests in continental Southeast Asia, based on temporal differences of a modified normalized burn ratio (NBR) vegetation index. We generate NBR values from each ava...

The effects of machinery and livestock on forest soil compaction have mostly been studied at short-term and local scales. A better understanding of the long-term effects of compaction in mature stands at the management scale is needed, especially in...

The recovery of soil properties and the proper growth of natural tree regeneration are key elements for maintaining forest productivity after selective logging operations. This study was conducted on the soil properties and natural growth of two pion...

Downed logs on the forest floor provide habitat for species, fuel for forest fires, and function as a key component of forest nutrient cycling and carbon storage. Ground-based field surveying is a conventional method for mapping and characterizing do...

Human-caused habitat conversion, degradation, and climate change threaten global biodiversity, particularly in tropical forests where vascular epiphytes—non-parasitic plants growing on other plants—may be especially vulnerable. Epiphytes...

Tropical forests play a key role in the global carbon and hydrological cycles, maintaining biological diversity, slowing climate change, and supporting the global economy and local livelihoods. Yet, rapidly growing populations are driving continued d...

Skidders are very cost-effective extraction machines, and winch-assist systems may extend their operating range to increasingly steep terrain. The use of winch-assist skidder systems is relatively new, and little information is available about their...

Forest insects and pathogens have significant impacts on U.S. forests, annually affecting an area nearly three times that of wildfires and timber harvesting combined. However, coupled with these direct effects of forest insects and pathogens are the...

The impact of anthropogenic disturbances on the spread of invasive species is one of the central issues of invasion biology. In our study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between certain silvicultural activities and the spread of Tree of Hea...

This study was executed to determine the plant species of herbaceous cover in a skid road subjected to soil compaction due to timber skidding in a beech (Fagus orientalis Lipsky.) stand. Our previous studies have shown that ground based timber skiddi...

In Canada, climate change and forest harvesting may both threaten the ecological integrity of boreal lakes. To disentangle the effects of natural variation in climate and lake environments from those of logging, we evaluated long-term variation (1991...

The concept of forest degradation tends to be addressed in broad terms, and existing definitions are difficult to apply in practice. These definitions are based on a reduction in the production of ecosystem goods and services, but fail to address how...

Natural disturbances shape forest ecosystem characteristics, including carbon storage and structure. Often, natural disturbances are compounded with anthropogenic disturbances, which may alter the trajectory of forest carbon stock recovery. Heterogen...

Wildfires and logging play an important role in regulating soil carbon fluxes in forest ecosystems. In Siberia, large areas are disturbed by fires and logging annually. Climate change and increasing anthropogenic pressure have resulted in the expansi...

In 2016, in response to forest loss, the Myanmar government banned logging operations for 1 year throughout the entire country and for 10 years in specific regions. However, it is unclear whether this measure will effectively reduce forest loss, beca...

Different abiotic and biotic disturbances are expected to become more common in the future due to a warming climate. Globally, post-disturbance salvage logging is becoming more predominant to recover economic value from timber in disturbed forests. T...

Imagery from medium resolution satellites, such as Landsat, have long been used to map forest disturbances in the tropics. However, the Landsat spatial resolution (30 m) has often been considered too coarse for reliably mapping small-scale selective...

Background: Wildfire is known to reduce forest carbon stocks, but the influence of antecedent disturbance on wildfire related carbon stock losses is not as well understood. Disturbances such as logging and wildfire may increase the vulnerability of r...

A typical case of multiple-use forest management (MFM) in Southwestern Amazon is the commercial harvesting of Amazon or Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa) seeds and of timber of other tree species. Although the Amazon nut is the most important non-tim...

Remotely sensed imagery provides a useful tool for land managers to assess the extent and severity of post-wildfire salvage logging disturbance. This investigation uses high resolution QuickBird and National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) imager...

Extensive wildfires and logging have affected the Russian boreal forests in recent decades. Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) forests are widespread in Russia and are one of the most disturbed tree species in Siberia. However, the effects of disturban...

Understanding the stand dynamics of tropical production forests is essential for determining the sustainability of a polycyclic selective logging system, but limited related studies have addressed the impacts of illegal logging over time. Myanmar fac...

Forest ecosystems in Europe undergo cyclic fluctuations with alternating periods of forest prosperity and disturbances. Forest disturbances are caused by large-scale calamities (climate-induced and unforeseen events) resulting in an increased volume...

Forest degradation in the tropics is a widespread, yet poorly understood phenomenon. This is particularly true for tropical and subtropical dry forests, where a variety of disturbances, both natural and anthropogenic, affect forest canopies. Addressi...

As tropical forests are frequently impacted by human disturbance, forests in various stages of disturbance recovery are increasingly important for maintaining biodiversity. However, much remains unclear regarding the impacts of prior disturbance inte...

Catastrophic wind events play important but poorly documented roles in shaping bottomland hardwood forest structure and composition. The objective of this study was to survey a forested wetland area in Illinois, USA, twenty years following a severe t...

Reduced-impact logging (RIL) has been recognized as a promising strategy for biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration within sustainable forest management (SFM) areas. However, monitoring the forest understory—a critical area for asse...

The increasing dependence of rural communities on forest resources contributes significantly to deforestation and ecosystem degradation in West Africa. The Ouémé Supérieur Classified Forest (OSCF), one of Benin’s largest fo...

Wildfires are one of the most important disturbance factors in Siberia, covering up to 30 Mha annually. Carbon emissions vary greatly depending on the ecosystem type and fire severity. The fuel load and structure in different ecosystems are fundament...

The dry forests of southern Ecuador are characterized by a great floristic variety and high endemism rates in different taxonomic groups; however, these forests are disappearing at an alarming rate due to anthropogenic disturbances. Epiphytic cryptog...

Forest disturbance effects on La Crosse virus (LACV) are currently unknown. We determined the abundance of three LACV accessory vectors (Aedes albopictus, Ae. canadensis, and Ae. vexans) and the primary amplifying host (Eastern chipmunk; Tamias stria...

In November 2004, a severe windstorm destroyed large portions of the spruce-dominated forests in the Tatra National Park (northern Slovakia). This study focused on the status of deadwood and its influence on post-disturbance forest regeneration 18 ye...