Treesearch

This paper addresses the question of whether spiritual, religious or cultural values held by humans for some wild mountain areas can protect these special places from developments that impair both these values and wild nature. The answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no, and sometimes a minimization of damage. Examples of each of these scenarios are briefly given, along with a more detailed current battle between the sacred and the profane in the case of the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, USA. Some recommendations are given that help to strengthen the case when intangible values of reverence...

The main goal of national forest programs is to lead and steer forest policy development and implementation processes in an inter-sectoral way (FAO 2006). National forest monitoring systems contribute to forest programs through monitoring forest changes and forest services over time (FAO 2013). To do so, they generally collect and analyze forest-related data and provide knowledge and recommendations at regular intervals. The collection of forest-related data and their analyses have continually evolved with technological and computational advances (Kleinn 2002).

As pressures on forest resources mount, there is an increasing need for up-to-date information on which sound management and policy decisions can be made. This is evident in the adoption of shorter inventory cycle lengths for national forest inventories in the past few decades. While these intensified efforts are meritorious, substantial efficiency can be lost if cycle lengths are too short in relation to growth in the population. Specifically, if growth is small in relation to measurement variation, the signal-to-noise ratio is small and considerable expense is incurred to obtain data of...

The use of conservation easements to keep private lands undeveloped and protect open space and large scale landscapes has grown rapidly. The New York State Adirondack Park includes 2.5 million acres (1 million ha) of state owned land and 3 million acres (1.2 million ha) of private lands; over 781,000 acres (316,194 ha) of these private lands were under publicly held conservation easement by 2012. Private landowners include commercial forest and agricultural owners, second homeowners, residential landowners, conservation organizations, educational institutions, and others. The conservation...

The State of Maine in the US is 94% privately owned, and is the most forested state in the country. Fifteen years ago, Maine ranked last among US eastern states in its percentage of land under conservation; today it ranks near the top. The Nature Conservancy and its many partners have achieved this extraordinary turn-around through a combination of bold acquisitions and strategic innovations. This paper will explain The Nature Conservancy's pioneering strategies for the protection and restoration of large, privately owned forested landscapes; strategies that are applicable in many other...

The proliferation of digital cameras co-located with eddy covariance instrumentation provides new opportunities to better understand the relationship between canopy phenology and the seasonality of canopy photosynthesis. In this paper we analyze the abilities and limitations of canopy color metrics measured by digital repeat photography to track seasonal canopy development and photosynthesis, determine phenological transition dates, and estimate intra-annual and interannual variability in canopy photosynthesis. We used 59 site-years of camera imagery and net ecosystem exchange measurements...

This paper illustrates how wilderness, biodiversity, and human health are intertwined. Proceeding from the assumption that humankind is part of, rather than apart from, nature, health is re-imagined as a dynamic relationship that can best be conceived in broad ecological terms. Health, from an ecological perspective, is a measure of the wellness of the individual and the ecosystem considered together. Health, at its core, is symbiotic in nature. To make the case, seven organisms are discussed that have great potential medicinal value for humankind if only their habitats are protected and...

Numerous statistical models are employed when processing forest inventory data. These models primarily provide predicted values for attributes that are difficult and/or time-consuming to measure. In some applications, models are applied across a large geographic area, which assumes the relationship between the response variable and predictors is constant within the area. The extent to which this assumption holds for a tree height prediction modelwas evaluated at regional, ecoprovince and ecosection scales in the northeastern US. Two nonlinear regression modelswere tested, a spatially...

As part of the development of the 2011 National Land Cover Database (NLCD) tree canopy cover layer, a pilot project was launched to test the use of high-resolution photography coupled with extensive ancillary data to map the distribution of tree canopy cover over four study regions in the conterminous US. Two stochastic modeling techniques, random forests (RF) and stochastic gradient boosting (SGB), are compared. The objectives of this study were first to explore the sensitivity of RF and SGB to choices in tuning parameters and, second, to compare the performance of the two final models by...

Short rotation woody crops belonging to the genera Populus L., Salix L., Pinus L., and Eucalyptus LHer. have provided broad economic and ecological benefits throughout the world, including afforestation and reforestation along urban to rural gradients. Within the genus Populus, cottonwoods, poplars, aspens, and their hybrids (hereafter referred to as poplars) have been shown to exhibit favorable genotype × environment interactions, especially in the face of changing climates. Similar growth responses have been reported for Pinus, especially with white pine (Pinus strobus L.) in the North...