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Indonesia's internationally- and domestically-significant pulp and paper industries source their feedstock from tree plantations. A suite of regulatory (Indonesian Sustainable Production Forest Management Certification and Timber Legality Verification) and market instruments (forest certification) have been introduced to promote sustainability and legality of production from tree plantations, and some producers have also adopted other voluntary sustainability measures. This study investigates sustainability and legality compliance by actors in an Indonesian pulp and paper value chain as a case study of environmental innovation. Results are based on primary fieldwork along segments of the value chain, and analysis of audit reports and other publicly-available information. The value chain sources fibrewood from tree plantation concessions and pallet wood from a variety of suppliers. Audit reports suggest high levels of compliance with sustainability and legality requirements, but our research suggests that these reports might not reflect some area of poor performance and non-compliance. We identify weaknesses in the design of regulatory systems, and in auditing and monitoring processes, as the principal reasons for these deficiencies. Drawing on relevant theory and on practice elsewhere, we suggest that compliance and sustainability can be improved by addressing key areas of regulatory silence, by shifting auditing to be more performance-than paper-based, by strengthening independent monitoring from civil society, by increasing the frequency of witness auditing from the National Accreditation Board, and by fostering synergies between regulatory instruments and voluntary forest certification. These changes would improve the effectiveness of regulatory and voluntary instruments to promote cleaner production in Indonesian pulp and paper value chains. Image 1 • Indonesian pulp and paper value chains are globally significant. • These value chains must comply with national sustainability certification and legality verification systems. • Audit reports suggesting high levels of compliance do not appear to reflect areas of poor performance and non-compliance. • Weaknesses in regulatory design, auditing and monitoring are the main reasons for poor performance and non-compliance. • Changes in regulatory design and implementation would promote cleaner production in Indonesian pulp and paper value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart forestry, an innovative approach leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), aims to enhance forest management while minimizing the environmental impact. The efficacy of AI in this domain is contingent upon the availability of extensive, high-quality data, underscoring the pivotal role of sensor-based data acquisition in the digital transformation of forestry. However, the complexity and challenging conditions of forest environments often impede data collection efforts. Achieving the full potential of smart forestry necessitates a comprehensive integration of sensor technologies throughout the process chain, ensuring the production of standardized, high-quality data essential for AI applications. This paper highlights the symbiotic relationship between human expertise and the digital transformation in forestry, particularly under challenging conditions. We emphasize the human-in-the-loop approach, which allows experts to directly influence data generation, enhancing adaptability and effectiveness in diverse scenarios. A critical aspect of this integration is the deployment of autonomous robotic systems in forests, functioning both as data collectors and processing hubs. These systems are instrumental in facilitating sensor integration and generating substantial volumes of quality data. We present our universal sensor platform, detailing our experiences and the critical importance of the initial phase in digital transformation—the generation of comprehensive, high-quality data. The selection of appropriate sensors is a key factor in this process, and our findings underscore its significance in advancing smart forestry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bundle of forest landowners' rights largely varies from one jurisdiction to another. On a global scale, the diversity of forest management regime and property rights systems is such that finding comprehensive and standardised approaches for governance analysis purposes is a challenging task. This paper explores the use of the Property Rights Index for Forestry (PRIF) as an analytical tool based on five rights domains (access, withdrawal, management, exclusion, and alienation) to assess how regulatory frameworks impact the owners' forest property rights. We show that PRIF is a reliable index for various governance arrangements, considering its ability to score forest owners' freedom to decide in case studies that range from the Amazon area (Brazil), Misiones province (Argentina) and Quebec (Canada) to community-managed Nepalese and Mexican forests. PRIF scores obtained in these diverse governance arrangements confirm that the governance of forests held by entities other than the state is driven by two factors: the owner's ability to exclude the public from the use of his/her own resource and the owner's freedom to decide on the forest management goals. These factors explained 66.44% of the variance in our sample and should be considered as the main potential drivers while implementing any new international or national policy. Despite having a few limitations, the PRIF is a promising governance indicator and has been proven to perform well for various socioeconomic and legal contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic detection of forest change is the fundamental method of monitoring forest resources and an essential means of preserving the accuracy and timeliness of forest land resource data. This study focuses on a deep learning-based method for dynamic forest change detection using Sentinel-2 satellite data, especially within mountainous areas. First, the performance of various deep learning models (U-Net++, U-Net, LinkNet, DeepLabV3+, and STANet) and various loss functions (CrossEntropyLoss(CELoss), DiceLoss, FocalLoss, and their combinations) are compared on a self-made dataset. Next, the best model and loss function is used to predict the annual forest change in Hunan Province from 2017 to 2021, and the detection results are evaluated in 12 sample areas. Finally, forest changes are detected in Sentinel-2 images for each quarter of 2017–2021. In addition, a dynamic detection map of forest change in Hunan Province from 2017 to 2021 is drawn. The results reveal that the U-Net++ model and the CELoss performed the best on the self-made dataset, with a Precision of 0.795, a Recall of 0.748, and an F1-score of 0.771. The results of annual and quarterly forest change detection were consistent with the changes in the Sentinel-2 images with accurate boundaries. This result demonstrates the high practicality and generalizability of the method used in this paper. This paper achieves a rapid and accurate extraction of multi-temporal Sentinel-2 image forest change areas based on the U-Net++ model, which can be used as a benchmark for future large territorial areas monitoring and management of forest resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the 18th century Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) monocultures have been artificially introduced in extensive areas of rusty soils in Central Europe. Such forest management practice has involved, however, several serious problems, like e.g. soil degradation implying the decrease in productivity of forest sites, and the clear increase in the risk of disturbances (pest gradations, fi res, wind damages etc.) occurrence. Those troubles have involved the increasing discussion on rational forest management on sandy soils, which are predominant in lowland woodlands of Central Europe. Thus, in this paper we aimed to indicate selected problems of sustainable management of rusty soils in forestry with regard to lowland forests found in the region. The special focus was paid on controversies being related to conversion of pine stands overgrowing these soils, because of its especially high importance for forest management in Central Europe. We postulate that we should intensify the conversion of pure pine stands overgrowing rusty soils into mixed forests, which would reduce the risk of the assumed, and being involved with the ongoing climate changes, problems with the stability of pine forests in Central Europe. The study shows that the current methodology of forest site types diagnosis used in Poland may lead to underestimation of the types, and consequently it consolidates the focus of Polish forestry on breeding pine stands on rusty soils. Following the existing controversies regarding the diagnosis of a forest site type on rusty soils, we postulate that we should more broadly underplant pine stands overgrowing the soils with deciduous trees, regardless of the diagnosed forest site type in forest inventory works. In turn, in conversions executed in maturing conifer stands using a gap cutting, the emphasis should be put on plant diversity. Namely, we highlight in the paper that in the gaps, besides major deciduous species (usually oak and/or beech), the admixture of ameliorative trees should obligatory be introduced (e.g. European hornbeam, Carpinus betulus), which happens to be ignored in practice. We postulate also that logging residues removal, which is still executed in some forest districts in Poland, should be skipped. This practice is especially irrational when it is done in sites dedicated for stand conversion, because it highly increases the risk of mortality and/or of the distinct decrease in growth dynamics of young hardwoods introduced in post-pine sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of the agricultural and forestry land management information system is predicated on the acquisition of spatial positioning data of agricultural and forestry land, i.e., the surveying and mapping of agricultural and forestry land. It also serves as the central component of the overall management information system. It is necessary to find solutions to the issues of large plot areas and far-reaching boundary lines in light of the current situation of land right confirmation. With its high efficiency, the use of GPS technology for land right confirmation can not only increase work productivity and speed up construction but also lower operating costs. The method of confirming landownership through surveying and mapping is studied in this paper using GPS technology. With respect to various land types, various classification methods have varying degrees of classification accuracy. This method is one of the three algorithms that classify green land, which includes grassland, cultivated land, and forest land; however, it does not clearly distinguish between forest land and grassland, with forest land having an average classification accuracy of 58.69 percent. The average accuracy of classifying forest land is 73.14 percent. The classification accuracy of forest land using this method is 88.45 percent, which is a relatively high percentage. It can be seen that this method is more accurate in identifying minute differences between ground objects. This is demonstrated by comparing the accuracy of forest land classification with that of other methods. A lot of surveying and mapping work has been done on the assumption that urban control networks have been established in many cities. The most ideal option is to combine GPS technology with high-precision photogrammetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some aspects in the case of extracting wood with horses, insisting on its economic aspects. Three felling areas from production units P.U. V and P.U. VI, Marghita Forest District, Bihor Forest Administration were chosen. The areas included hygienic cuttings, thinning cuttings and progressive fellings, with small volumes of the average trees to allow extraction with horses. The logging costs were determined and then they were compared in different situations according to the share of extraction method by horses, respectively the traditional extraction by winches. The importance of determining unit rates to be grouped into group norms, centralized under the form of tables, with multiple inputs to estimate the logging costs as easily and accurately as possible was also highlighted. Thus, grouped norms have been drawn up for situations/variants of extraction by horses which render the unit costs in different situations. Three major factors that significantly influence the logging costs when using horses were identified, namely: the volume of the average tree, the degree of accessibility and the extraction distance by horses. The logging method has little influence, theoretically, but the cutting of large trees must be performed to facilitate the work by horses in the forest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tradition of using medicinal and aromatic plants in Romania dates back to the year 1862. The purpose of the present paper is to identify the main medicinal and aromatic plants, as well as estimating the quantities that can be harvested from Dobrogea in 2018 from the forest fund managed by RNP - Romsilva, the National Forest Management Institute. As such, 21 medicinal plants were identified in the two forest districts (DS) from Constanța and Tulcea Counties. A quantity of 22 t of medicinal plants from 10 species was estimated for harvesting in DS Constanța, while in DS Tulcea the number reached 588 tones from 21 species. The largest quantities that can be harvested in DS Constanța are represented by locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) - 5 tones and elderberry (Sambucus nigra) - 5 tones, while for DS Tulcea they are represented by silver linden (Tilia tomentosa) - 180 tones, elderberry (Sambucus nigra) - 60t and nettle (Urtica dioica) - 50 tones. All the other species can be gathered in quantities ranging from 1 ton to 40 tones. Taking into account the natural conditions, Dobrogea region is characterised by a high potential of medicinal plants. The possibility that these natural resources are maintained and even developing future abundant populations is conditioned by the appliance of appropriate management measures that abide to the present laws, the species sustainability principle as well as the protection of endangered species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern forestry is gradually moving towards man-made forests on a large scale. Plantations with advanced forestry system have been introduced with the goal of sustainable forestry development and to enhance social, ecological, and economic benefits. Forest plantations with native and exotic species have been established in China and worldwide with shorter rotation cycles than natural forests. In this paper, we discuss the role and perspectives of plantation forests in the Chinese sustainable forest development, the evolution of various plantation programs, the ecological effects of plantations, and the measures to improve plantation forestry. The Chinese government has given substantial importance to nurturing plantation forest resources through various large scale afforestation programs. In 2019, the total area covered by plantations in China reached 79.54 million ha, with a stock volume of 3.39 billion m³ (59.30 m³ per ha); coniferous forests (26.11 million ha, 32.83%) and broad-leaved forests (26.45 million ha, 33.25%) are the dominant types. Plantations have been primarily distributed in the central and southern parts of the country. Plantations with fast-growing and high-yielding tree species facilitated Chinese afforestation activities and improved the administration of forest production, which effectively boosted the forest industry. Plantation forest resources offer many potential productive, economic, and social advantages, though they are also associated with a loss of biodiversity and climate change makes them likely susceptible to disease and insect attack. Appropriate forest management practices during planning, execution, and maintenance of plantations can contribute to the conservation, promotion, and restoration of biodiversity, with the final aim of attaining a balance between having forest plantations and natural forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide, PEFC8482; represents the most spread certification scheme in forestry. The goal of this paper was to highlight the evolution of the number of Chain of Custody (CoC) certificates and the PEFC8482; certified area worldwide between 2013 and 2017, by analyzing the public data provided by the official website. Currently, the total PEFC8482; certified forest area accounts for approximately 313 million hectares, out of which 55% are located in North America. As for the largest forest areas certified by PEFC8482; the top three places are held by Canada, The United States of America and Australia. At the end of 2017, in Europe the PEFC8482; scheme had certified forests from a total number of twenty four countries, with the highest areas being shared by Finland, Russian Federation and Sweden. According to the most recent statistics, around 82% of the total CoC certificates issued worldwide were recorded in Europe, France, Germany and United Kingdom being the countries with the highest shares. Currently, in Romania only twenty three CoC certificates were issued and no forest area was yet certified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper the investigations had as a purpose to knowledge of the Lymantria monacha L., 1758 populations dynamic during the period 2013-2017 in the Forest Direction Sibiu, in order to use the results for a monitoring plan and control for the year 2018. The investigations made within the frame work of the Forest Districts: Arpa?, Avrig, Miercurea Sibiului, Sibiu and VI Cibin in the last five years studied the presence of this defoliator in a large number within Forest District Miercurea Sibiului (260 specimen), followed by the Forest District Arpa? (147 specimen), Sibiu (83 specimen), Forest District Cibin VI (55 specimen) and Forest District Avrig (52 specimen). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, forest management has focused on forestry-related practices whereas other industries have been managed separately. Forest management requires the integration of all natural resource development activities, along with other anthropogenic and natural forest disturbances (e.g., climate change, pollution, wildfire, pest disturbance) to understand how human activities can change forested ecosystems. The term cumulative effects has been used to describe these attempts to integrate all disturbances to develop an understanding of past, current, and future impacts on environmental, social, and economic components of the system. In this review, we focus on the science required to understand the past, current, and future impacts of the cumulative effects of anthropogenic and natural disturbances on forested ecosystems or their components. We have primarily focused on the terrestrial system with an emphasis on northern forests in Canada. Our paper is not intended to be a comprehensive review of all cumulative effects science but a synthesis of the challenges and approaches currently being used. Central repositories were identified as an approach to deal with issues of availability of remotely sensed data on anthropogenic and natural disturbances. Data integration projects, open data, and well-designed large-scale data collection efforts are needed to provide sufficient data on environmental responses to cumulative effects. As well, large-scale integrated, modularized ecosystem models are needed to bring stressor and environmental response data together to explore responses to, and interactions between, multiple stressors to project these effects into the future and to identify future data collection needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how forestry standardization process interrelates with the national and sectoral economic characteristics and the evolution of sustainable forest management implementation in communist and post-communist Romania. The study used the database of Romanian Standardization Association for selecting forestry specific standards, which have been issued since 1949. The selected standards were grouped according to their scope, issuing period and international recognition, and the obtained distributions were analysed in the context of sectoral economic evolution. In the communist period, the long-term sectoral strategy, which was centred on sustainable forest management, added value products and export was accompanied by a sustained effort in standardizing the design and quality of forest products, as well as the needed processes. Based on standardization, the efficient and integrated forest industry acted in the framework of a prescriptively regulated sustainable forest management. Mandatory national standards from the communist period have been mostly replaced by post-communist consensual international standards. The opportunities of a market economy and EU trade supported a private forest industry that is increasingly efficient, productive and innovative. However, considering the high forestry sector environmental and social sustainability requirements, the state authorities must carefully address their mission of balancing different interests, for which standardization may provide very useful tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of the forestry educational centre is a good effort made to protect and conserve the forest as well as assisting the public in understanding the landscape changes and sensitivity towards its sustainability. However, there are lacks of consciousness and obligation of the important of landscape conservation in the context of development planning that causes the problem of effective implementation of a conservation strategy exists. Therefore, this paper aims to discuss forest landscapes conservation, particularly in Malaysia with the objectives of to analyse the current landscape features of selected forestry educational centres and to increase awareness among the stakeholders on the importance of conserving and preserving forest landscape towards its sustainability. The study was conducted using two methods specifically via a case study where the Sultan Idris Shah Forestry Education Center (SISFEC) was selected and field observations were conducted to analyse the existing physical condition of the study site. Findings have indicated that SISFEC has successfully conserved the existing landscapes and delivered awareness and knowledge on forest conservation and preservation to the public through several activities such as forestry camps, nature walks, and environmental education programmes. On the other hand, the findings also suggested that the forestry management should give higher priority in maintaining the manmade landscape image of the forest and plan their activities well through good monitoring and efficient management planning which will ensure the site's sustainability in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private forest owners are increasingly responsible for providing an extensive range of goods and services from their forests, as there are around 100,000 forest owners in Estonia. In order to support forest owners in providing these services, the state has continuously backed the forestry sector and established a public-private partnership with forest owners' associations as well as their umbrella organisations and cooperatives. The aim of this paper is to identify the service and information needs of private forest owners in the context of this established support system. Using a survey sample of 757 respondents, we found that in regard to informational needs more focus should be put on forest management activities, i.e. on available information about service providers' contacts, prices, options and principles for selling harvesting rights and timber. Furthermore, joint timber sales as a service should be further developed and focused on. While forest owners ranked highly both the information about financial support and the specific measures, they found the system sometimes too complicated. Both in terms of information and service importance-performance, forest owners indicated certification as a low-priority topic. Whilst interest representation in policy processes was indicated as a very important service, its performance was rated quite modestly indicating slight dissatisfaction with the current arrangements. There are also several socio-demographic attributes of forest owners that influence their needs for information and services about forest management. However, a better understanding of these attributes might help develop the system further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article substantiates the content basis of application of the foresight methodology in the forestry complex in the context of sustainable spatial forestry management. The socio-ecological and economic effectiveness of sustainable forestry is determined by the completeness of continuous and non-exhaustive use of all components of forest ecosystems, including non-market, at all levels of spatial development (local, regional, national and global). It stipulates the high responsibility of the world community, society, state, local authorities and businesses for political, institutional, economic, technological, and project decisions in the sphere of forestry management in the spatialtemporal dimension. It leads to the need for qualitative forecasting of the future sustainable development of the forestry complex, which determines the search and application of modern effective approaches to strategic planning and management of the forestry complex, among which foresight is particularly highlighted. Thus, the paper considers the key features of foresight, which must be taken into account when investigating the future vision of sustainable spatial development of forestry. Thus, the purpose of this study is to generalize and identify the features and possibilities of using the foresight methodology in the forestry complex in the context of sustainable spatial development. The particular features of nature management in the forestry complex in the process of foresight research should be taken into consideration. Existing principles and classification signs for the foresight are presented in the context of sustainable forestry. The application of existing foresight methods is implemented on the example of using the scenario approach to the substantiation of organizational and economic conditions for the formation and development of ecosystem entrepreneurship. At the same time, we have considered the application of the scenario approach within the framework of solving the problem of forest ecosystem business development. The development of entrepreneurship on the ecological and economic basis should become a qualitatively new and effective type of forestry management based on the use of advanced, innovative methods, forms, methods of production organization and combination of resources. The variable development of the use of the scenario approach to the substantiation of organizational and economic conditions for the formation and development of forest ecosystem entrepreneurship has been presented. Thus, the use of various foresight technologies (in particular, the scenario approach) will provide a qualitatively new level of constructive substantiation, in particular, the national strategy for sustainable forestry and long-term forestry programs on an innovative basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature has highlighted the growing array of scale mismatches in environmental governance and offered policy design principles for improved governance approaches. A next step is to develop our understanding of specific policy tools that can address scale mismatches. This paper reviews the range and importance of scale-related challenges and solutions in environmental governance, situating this discussion in the context of forest governance. We then tackle the matter of policy tools to address scale mismatches, by synthesizing findings from recent policy research on two contemporarily important issues in forest governance, collaborative landscape restoration and multilevel monitoring for ecological integrity, each of which presents distinct challenges related to scale matching and coordination. The research suggests that policy innovations are supporting greater scale sensitivity, through specific legal mandates that require scale considerations and promotion of partnerships and networks. Successful strategies balance requirements to work across scales and levels, with flexibility to tailor approaches to local contexts; our work demonstrates how policy tools can facilitate this in particular contexts. Future research should seek to understand the trade-offs of working at particular scales and continue to explore examples of how design principles for adaptive governance manifest in policy and practice across different contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most significant European forest-related strategies highlight the importance of multifunctional forests for human wellbeing, due to the provision of a wide range of goods and services. However, managing competing aims, such as timber production, economic drivers and biodiversity conservation is often difficult for practitioners. In order to assess the loss and gain of ecosystem services caused by forestry, trade-off evaluation has been increasingly used to aid decision-making. In this study, four silvicultural scenarios are simulated using the Marteloscope approach to evaluate the trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and timber production. Tree-related Microhabitats (TreMs) are used as a proxy to evaluate forest habitat value, while timber production is assessed by the number of harvested trees, biomass removal and economic income. This study takes an innovative approach by investigating TreMs using the Marteloscope in mixed Mediterranean forest. The main findings from this paper confirm that tree-related microhabitats can be considered ecological indicators effective in identifying important habitat trees, to assess forest habitat value and support tree marking for thinning operations and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract To identify policies that will promote positive effects and mitigate negative ones of grazing is a major challenge in the Silvo-pastoral system. This paper presents the role of examining land-cover change trajectories by remote sensing imagery in grazing policy monitoring. The study was conducted for Duzlercami forest ecosystem located in the Mediterranean geographical region of Turkey and administrated by the General Directorate of Forestry (GDF) of the Ministry of Forestry and Water Affairs. Time series land-cover datasets from Landsat images between 1988 and 2016 were collected and classified. To link the conversions among trajectories and grazing policy, class level landscape metrics derived from the classified images were used. To validate the approach, yearly grazing-plans managed by GDF and populations of livestock were used. Results of this research have indicated that even though there is a yearly grazing plan, overgrazing can happen on the pilot site, and it can be easily identified by the destruction of woody vegetation. The notable correlation (r2 = 0.89) between degraded woody vegetation and cattle population has occurred in the last 30 years in the landscape, and Landsat imagery can effectively support the grazing policy mapping and monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Windstorms are among the main factors causing damages to forest ecosystems. These meteorological phenomena cannot be predicted, prevented or controlled. They are occurring rapidly and take place in a meteorological context characterized by high velocities of the air currents. This paper analyses the characteristics of the severe meteorological events on 20 July 2011 which have led to windthrows on extended areas within the Apuseni Mountains in the Romanian Carpathians. The study highlights the evolution of the synoptic processes both at regional scale and at mesoscale. The meteorological analysis is carried out based on synoptic maps and by means of the data coming from the doppler WSR-98D radar in Bobohalma. The main results indicate the occurrence of the severe meteorological phenomena against the background of alternating atmospheric circulation types. The main cause is the transition of the zonal circulation into maritime tropical circulation. This contributed to the destabilizing of the warm and moist air masses that have generated strong storms at national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on 2010 FAO report, teak forest and plantation in Indonesia covers 1,269 million hectares or 7 per mill of total area of Indonesia. It can be found dominantly in Central and East Java. PT Perhutani, Indonesia has responsible for management of the government owned forests in the islands of Java and Madura. Based on 2007 data, the teak wood production is 517,627 m3 and the highest percentage, which is 37% of total production, is coming from East Java. In this paper, we develop growth population models using Leslie Matrix and Markov Chain in order to predict the future condition based on the current condition. The models are implemented into data from Teak Forest in Begal, East Java, that covers 2,052.8 hectares and consists of 114 sites. The result from the first model using Leslie Matrix shows that it needs 16 years from year 2011 that the sustainable condition of the forest can be achieved. The result from the implementation of the second model using Markov Chain into the existing data shows that the condition of the teak forest can be classified as quite critical because the good condition part based on its density of the early age group (0 - 4 years) has potential to become the worst condition before its harvest time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Forest transitions" have recently received much attention, particularly in the hope that the historical transitions from net deforestation to forest recovery documented in several temperate countries might be reproduced in tropical countries. The analysis of forest transitions, however, has struggled with questions of forest definition and has at times focussed purely on tree cover, irrespective of tree types (e.g. native forest or exotic plantations). Furthermore, it has paid little attention to how categories and definitions of forest are used to political effect or shape how forest change is viewed. In this paper, I propose a new heuristic model to address these lacunae, building on a conception of forests as distinct socio-ecological relationships between people, trees and other actors that maintain and threaten the forest. The model draws on selected work in the forest transition, land change science and critical social science literatures. It explicitly forces analysts to see forests as much more than a land cover statistic, particularly as it internalizes consideration of forest characteristics and the differential ways in which forests are produced and thought about. The new heuristic model distinguishes between four component forest transitions: transitions in quantitative forest cover (FT1); in characteristics like species composition or density (FT2); in the ecological, socio-economic, and political processes and relationships that constitute particular forests (FT3); and in forest ideologies, discourses and stories (FT4). The four are interlinked; the third category emerges as the linchpin. An analysis of forest transformations requires attention to diverse social and ecological processes, to power-laden official categories and classifications, and to the discourses and tropes by which people interpret these changes. Diverse examples are used to illustrate the model components and highlight the utility of considering the four categories of forest transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although wall-to-wall, accurate, and up-to-date forest composition maps at the stand level are a fundamental input for many applications, ranging from global environmental issues to local forest management planning, countrywide mapping approaches on the tree type level remain rare. This paper presents and validates an innovative remote sensing based approach for a countrywide mapping of broadleaved and coniferous trees in Switzerland with a spatial resolution of 3 m. The classification approach incorporates a random forest classifier, explanatory variables from multispectral aerial imagery and a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) data, digitized training polygons and independent validation data from the National Forest Inventory (NFI). The methodological workflow was optimized for an area of 41,285 km² that is characterized by temperate forests within a complex topography. Whereas high model overall accuracies (0.99) and kappa (0.98) were achieved, the comparison of the tree type map with independent NFI data revealed significant deviations that are related to underestimations of broadleaved trees (median of -3.17%). Constraints of the tree type mapping approach are mostly related to the acquisition date and time of the imagery and the topographic (negative) effects on the prediction. A comparison with the most recent High Resolution Layers (HRL) forest 2012 from the European Environmental Agency revealed that the tree type map is superior regarding spatial resolution, level of detail and accuracy. The high-quality map achieved with the approach presented here is of great value for optimizing forest management and planning activities and is also an important information source for applications outside the forestry sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key component of California's cap-and-trade program is the use of carbon offsets as compliance instruments for reducing statewide GHG emissions. Under this program, offsets are tradable credits representing real, verifiable, quantifiable, enforceable, permanent, and additional reductions or removals of GHG emissions. This paper focuses on the permanence and additionality standards for offset credits as defined and operationalized in California's Compliance Offset Protocol for U.S. Forest Projects. Drawing on a review of the protocol, interviews, current offset projects, and existing literature, we discuss how additionality and permanence standards relate to project participation and overall program effectiveness. Specifically, we provide an overview of offset credits as compliance instruments in California's cap-and-trade program, the timeline for a forest offset project, and the factors shaping participation in offset projects. We then discuss the implications of permanence and additionality at both the project and program levels. Largely consistent with previous work, we find that stringent standards for permanent and additional project activities can present barriers to participation, but also, that there may be a trade-off between project quality and quantity (i.e. levels of participation) when considering overall program effectiveness. We summarize what this implies for California's forest offset program and provide suggestions for improvements in light of potential program diffusion and policy learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents spider faunistics from abandoned coppice oak forest stands located along the South Moravia region. Spiders were collected from May to July 2012 by pitfall trapping at eight different localities. We collected 1945 adult spiders representing 20 families, 53 genera, and 90 species. More than one-third of all the species are known to be xerothermophilous with ecological restrictions to open and partly shaded habitats such as forest-steppe and sparse forests which belong to endangered habitats along central Europe. The most abundant species were Pardosa alacris, P. lugubris and Arctosa lutetiana from the family Lycosidae. In the surveyed area, 24 species were found listed in the Red List of Threatened Species in the Czech Republic (CR -- 1 species, EN -- 2 species, VU -- 15 species, LC -- 6 species). In general, we discovered a substantially diversified spider community with a large presence of rare and endangered species characteristic for open and xeric habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, plant root or crown size has been used in researching spatial relationships between plants and soil resources in most studies, and different methods have been used to address this relationship. However, few studies have reviewed the quantification of the relationship between plants and soil resources, and few studies have explained the roles of different plant functional groups on the soil resource distribution. In this paper, a method called integration of geostatistics, point pattern analysis and spatial comparison (IGPS) was used to quantify this relationship. The relationships between plants and soil resource patterns were evaluated from four plots with different spatial scales and different slopes within the Ziwuling Mountains of China. Several relationships were identified using IGPS. We have proved that in IGPS, the aggregation scale between plants and soil resources has been substituted for root or crown size to deeply reveal the spatial relationship between plants and soil resources. The results confirm that this method can not only determine which plant functional group can be affected by which resource but can also quantify the spatial relationship between plants and soil resources. These findings are important because this knowledge can be useful in formulating pasture and forest management strategies. IGPS is a powerful method to assist in study of the spatial relationships between plants and soil resources, and we recommend that this method be used worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the potential of multispectral airborne laser scanning (ALS) data for individual tree detection and tree species classification. The aim was to develop a single-sensor solution for forest mapping that is capable of providing species-specific information, required for forest management and planning purposes. Experiments were conducted using 1903 ground measured trees from 22 sample plots and multispectral ALS data, acquired with an Optech Titan scanner over a boreal forest, mainly consisting of Scots pine (Pinus Sylvestris), Norway spruce (Picea Abies), and birch (Betula sp.), in southern Finland. ALS-features used as predictors for tree species were extracted from segmented tree objects and used in random forest classification. Different combinations of features, including point cloud features, and intensity features of single and multiple channels, were tested. Among the field-measured trees, 61.3% were correctly detected. The best overall accuracy (OA) of tree species classification achieved for correctly-detected trees was 85.9% (Kappa = 0.75), using a point cloud and single-channel intensity features combination, which was not significantly different from the ones that were obtained either using all features (OA = 85.6%, Kappa = 0.75), or single-channel intensity features alone (OA = 85.4%, Kappa = 0.75). Point cloud features alone achieved the lowest accuracy, with an OA of 76.0%. Field-measured trees were also divided into four categories. An examination of the classification accuracy for four categories of trees showed that isolated and dominant trees can be detected with a detection rate of 91.9%, and classified with a high overall accuracy of 90.5%. The corresponding detection rate and accuracy were 81.5% and 89.8% for a group of trees, 26.4% and 79.1% for trees next to a larger tree, and 7.2% and 53.9% for trees situated under a larger tree, respectively. The results suggest that Channel 2 (1064 nm) contains more information for separating pine, spruce, and birch, followed by channel 1 (1550 nm) and channel 3 (532 nm) with an overall accuracy of 81.9%, 78.3%, and 69.1%, respectively. Our results indicate that the use of multispectral ALS data has great potential to lead to a single-sensor solution for forest mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bauxite mining operations are increasingly sited on Indigenous-owned land, particularly in tropical areas, including northern Australia. The environmental impacts of bauxite mining are significant. Native vegetation, including commercially valuable forests, is cleared and typically windrowed and burnt. For many Indigenous Australians, mining of their land creates much concern about biocultural, community health and livelihood impacts from the loss of access to traditional lands and resources, and the ability to 'care for country'. Improved pre-mining utilisation of forest resources and effective mine rehabilitation can mitigate some of these impacts and it is important to Indigenous communities that they are engaged in these processes. But Indigenous peoples' expectations are rarely considered or adequately addressed in site clearing activities or mine completion criteria, and there is limited guidance on how their expected outcomes can be monitored and evaluated for mine closure and relinquishment. This paper reports on a case-study of the Western Cape York Peninsula bauxite mining region in northern Australia. The paper reviews mine rehabilitation in the case-study region, including related Indigenous forest livelihoods initiatives, presents local Indigenous peoples' expectations for pre- and post-mining forest and landscape management as an integrated mining-community forestry 'vision', and discusses implications for mine completion criteria, mine closure and relinquishment. The findings highlight the need for Indigenous peoples' full and transparent free, prior and informed consent participation in all aspects of mine closure planning, and for further research to trial the development and assessment of mine completion criteria linked to local biocultural landscape restoration and Indigenous livelihoods. The findings can inform mining policymakers, regulators and industry professionals on the design, implementation and monitoring of mine completion criteria and associated pre- and post-mining management that will improve environmental outcomes and socio-cultural benefits for Indigenous communities impacted by mining. • Bauxite mining impacts Indigenous Traditional Owners (TOs). • TOs expect improved pre- and post-mining forest and landscape management. • Mine rehabilitation via Indigenous community forestry can support TO livelihoods. • Mine completion criteria must consider biocultural landscape restoration. • How to evaluate successful biocultural landscape restoration and livelihood outcomes? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investment products labelled as sustainable, as well as regulations on sustainable finance, such as the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities, are on the rise globally. While some of these products and regulations include forests and forestry, the forest–sustainable finance nexus is largely unexplored in academic research. This paper systematically analyses the emerging expert debate spanning across the financial and forest sectors. We conducted 51 in-depth qualitative interviews with experts from financial institutions, timberland and impact investors, international organizations, civil society organizations and academia. We chose mainly experts from Europe, as one of the regions spearheading the topic globally. Based on these, we identify five main narratives on the nexus between sustainable finance and forests. These narratives are strikingly different regarding such dimensions as emphasis on risks versus opportunities, preference for public versus private governance and investments, as well as on the sustainability of forest-related investments per se. While financial sector experts are mainly concerned about financial risks, and only partially about deforestation risks, forest sector experts with financial expertise promote investment opportunities either for the asset class, or to increase private investment in tropical forests. In contrast, some experts from both the forest and financial sectors explicitly exclude forests as investable assets for the private sector, seeing them instead as pure public goods. We conclude with underlining the importance of more cross-sectoral dialogue, but also research, to both critically assess and advance the role of sustainable finance policy and practice in supporting forest conservation, restoration, and sustainable management. • We analyse the link between sustainable finance and forests based on 51 expert interviews. • Five distinct narratives can be distinguished, differing strongly regarding several dimensions. • Differences include varying risk/opportunity, private/public governance, and forest/sustainability emphases. • Financial sector experts prefer mitigating financial risks, and partially deforestation ones. • Forest sector experts aim to increase investment opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the application of the Cross-Correlation Analysis (CCA) technique to multi-spatial resolution Earth Observation (EO) data for detecting and quantifying changes in forest ecosystems in two different protected areas, located in Southern Italy and Southern India. The input data for CCA investigation were elaborated from the forest layer extracted from an existing Land Cover/Land Use (LC/LU) map (time T1) and a more recent (T2, with T2 > T1) single date image. The latter consist of a High Resolution (HR) Landsat 8 OLI image and a Very High Resolution (VHR) Worldview-2 image, which were analysed separately. For the Italian site, the forest layer (1:5000) was first compared to the HR Landsat 8 OLI image and then to the VHR Worldview-2 image. For the Indian site, the forest layer (1:50,000) was compared to the Landsat 8 OLI image then the changes were interpreted using Worldview-2. The changes detected through CCA, at HR only, were compared against those detected by applying a traditional NDVI image differencing technique of two Landsat scenes at T1 and T2. The accuracy assessment, concerning the change maps of the multi-spatial resolution outputs, was based on stratified random sampling. The CCA technique allowed an increase in the value of the overall accuracy: from 52% to 68% for the Italian site and from 63% to 82% for the Indian site. In addition, a significant reduction of the error affecting the stratified changed area estimation for both sites was obtained. For the Italian site, the error reduction became significant at VHR (±2 ha) in respect to HR (±32 ha) even though both techniques had comparable overall accuracy (82%) and stratified changed area estimation. The findings obtained support the conclusions that CCA technique can be a useful tool to detect and quantify changes in forest areas due to both legal and illegal interventions, including relatively inaccessible sites (e.g., tropical forest) with costs remaining rather low. The data obtained through CCA intervention could not only support the commitments undertaken by the European Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) and the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) but also satisfy UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation biologists often use some specialized species as surrogates for communicating conservation needs, e.g. to signal states and changes in ecosystem. This requires a detailed knowledge of a species’ habitat demands and relationship between its occurrence and abundance, and certain environmental conditions. This paper explores the relationship between the occurrence and abundance of middle spotted woodpecker ( Leiopicus medius ) and structural, compositional, and functional elements of forest naturalness in three different forest landscapes in Poland, which encompass a wide spectrum of species’ habitats. Neither compositional nor functional elements of forest naturalness seemed to affect species’ distribution. In all studied areas, environmental variables related to the structural elements of forest naturalness, e.g. the share of old and uneven-aged stands, number of large living trees, positively influenced the occurrence and abundance of middle spotted woodpecker. Mature, unevenly structured forests might occur as a result of sustainable forest management, aimed at preserving the continuity of old stands and the maintenance of diverse age and species’ structure, providing suitable habitat condition for the species. Therefore, both presence and abundance of middle spotted woodpeckers can serve as indicators of wildlife-friendly forest management in deciduous forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change mitigation benefits from the land sector are not being fully realised because of uncertainty and controversy about the role of native forest management. The dominant policy view, as stated in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, is that sustainable forest harvesting yielding wood products, generates the largest mitigation benefit. We demonstrate that changing native forest management from commercial harvesting to conservation can make an important contribution to mitigation. Conservation of native forests results in an immediate and substantial reduction in net emissions relative to a reference case of commercial harvesting. We calibrated models to simulate scenarios of native forest management for two Australian case studies: mixed-eucalypt in New South Wales and Mountain Ash in Victoria. Carbon stocks in the harvested forest included forest biomass, wood and paper products, waste in landfill, and bioenergy that substituted for fossil fuel energy. The conservation forest included forest biomass, and subtracted stocks for the foregone products that were substituted by non-wood products or plantation products. Total carbon stocks were lower in harvested forest than in conservation forest in both case studies over the 100-year simulation period. We tested a range of potential parameter values reported in the literature: none could increase the combined carbon stock in products, slash, landfill and substitution sufficiently to exceed the increase in carbon stock due to changing management of native forest to conservation. The key parameters determining carbon stock change under different forest management scenarios are those affecting accumulation of carbon in forest biomass, rather than parameters affecting transfers among wood products. This analysis helps prioritise mitigation activities to focus on maximising forest biomass. International forest-related policies, including negotiations under the UNFCCC, have failed to recognize fully the mitigation value of native forest conservation. Our analyses provide evidence for decision-making about the circumstances under which forest management provides mitigation benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban forest naturalization has gained momentum within municipal planning and non-governmental organizations. As the interest in naturalization increases, so does the impetus for exploring its conceptual and practical dimensions. Naturalization is a form of ecological restoration with prominent social dimensions. One motivation is reintegrating the urban forest to a greater extent into its surroundings, increasing the habitat available for native species. However, naturalization is not always desirable, as we may want to use and modify certain areas for cultural purposes, or feasible, as some species may be unable to establish in an urban setting. This paper examines the concepts underlying naturalization and how they influence naturalization decisions and goals. It then provides a framework for urban forest naturalness and explores potential applications of naturalness assessments in urban forest management. The framework outlines 37 different biotic and abiotic dimensions of naturalness that can help urban forest decision-makers visualize and manage the urban forest through understanding its individual parts and thus the whole. If a site is weak in particular dimensions, actions can be directed to increase the naturalness of these components. Similarly, some dimensions may be of more interest than others, such as increasing habitat suitability for a particular species. We then offer real and hypothetical examples of applying the framework to urban forest management. The benefits of a naturalized urban forest are many. It provides habitat for native species and has an important role as a biological teaching tool for urban residents. In developing this framework, we hope to expand the discussion on naturalization beyond simply planting native species and ceasing mowing to positioning urban forests in a broader landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macrofungi constitute a group of the high-value forest resources worldwide. In this paper, we report species richness and composition of the macrofungi in sal (Shorea robusta) forests of mid-hill central Nepal, which were managed for 4–29 years by the local communities. The sal forests were rich in macrofungi (115 species) with Polyporaceae being the largest family followed by Clavariaceae. Saprotrophic fungi were more common than mycorrhizal species. The proportion of mycorrhiza was <40% of the total macrofungi species which might have indicated the deteriorated condition of the forests before the initiation of conservation management. However, the proportion of mycorrhizal species was slightly higher in the forests managed for >10 years than in the forests managed for short period. The species richness increased with increasing canopy and litter cover. Since silvicultural activities and resource utilization often have negative impacts to macrofungal diversity, these activities need to be optimized to keep balance between forest management and biodiversity conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most well-known and vast Calabrian pine forests are in the Sila mountain range, southern Italy. In this paper, present-day distribution of Calabrian pine in the Sila district was analyzed and compared with forest maps dating back to 1935 in order to assess the changes in land use. Main ecological and anthropogenic factors affecting Calabrian pine forest distribution were investigated by logistic regression models to identify the most important predictors of Calabrian pine persistence, expansion, and transition over the period 1935-2006. In 2006, the area covered by Calabrian pine forests and mixed Calabrian pinebeech forests was 36 100 ha and 20 221 ha, respectively. Overall, pine forest area increased by 38% between 1935 and 2006. Logistic regression revealed that Calabrian pine distribution in the Sila district was affected by both ecological (bioclimate, soil, and elevation) and anthropogenic factors (management, fire). Based on our results, four different potential dynamics of Calabrian pine stands are discussed in the perspective of the sustainable management and conservation of this important mountain forest habitat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The availability of common standardized geospatial information on composition, structure and distribution of forests is essential to support environmental actions, sustainable forest management and planning policies. Forest types maps are suitable tools for supporting both silvicultural and forest planning choices from local to global scale levels. For this reason local authorities may develop forest types maps independently, in which case a standardized/harmonized framework for their comparison and aggregation is essential. At the same time local forest types maps may not be directly related to pan-European forest resources assessments and classification systems. This paper presents results of the harmonization of four forest types maps available for central Italy. The process is based on a bottom-up approach aimed at maintaining the most detailed common nomenclature system across the different Regions. The final results, in terms of forest types area, are compared with several independent sources of information: (i) two forest maps, one developed at national level on the basis of the Corine Land Cover 2006, and one for high resolution forest / non forest classification developed at pan-European level; and (ii) two sample based inventories: the Italian National Forest Inventory (INFC) and the Italian Land Use Inventory (IUTI). The results show that the proposed bottomup harmonization approach is a suitable tool to guarantee the integrity and homogeneity of local forest types nomenclature systems, and to integrate such local data with European standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forests with special protection functions from the Southern Carpathians play an extremely important ecologic role. Forests situated on fields with lithological substratum very vulnerable towards erosion and landslides are situated in this wide category of forests and are occupying even large areas. They are followed by forests situated on sliding fields. These two stand categories are analysed in the present article, starting from a large number of data regarding their component species, as well as their age, consistency and altitude at which they are present. Among the tree species, the common beech is the most prevalent, followed by Norway spruce and alder. The stands have an equilibrated distribution on ages, while the altitude does not influence their spreading. The main consistency is situated at 0.8, but forests situated on lands vulnerable to erosion and landslides can reach the 0.9 consistency category. Specific management measures were analysed as they were applied to these forest categories. As such, it was determined that management measures are specific to the conservation regime in stands that have a high intensity protection function, while they become specific to the forest’s regime in forests where the protection’s intensity is more reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The total forest area in Europe accounts for 215 million hectares. In Europe, forest management is done both by private-owned and state-owned enterprises, companies, agencies or other structures. The European State Forest Association (EUSTAFOR) represents a forum of 33 national forest administrators (NFAs) originating from 22 countries, that are managing 30 million hectares of state-owned forests. The main aim of this study was to compare the data provided by EUSTAFOR for the NFAs regarding the managed forest areas. Secondly, the share of managed forest area per employee was assessed for each of the 23 members for which the information was available on the official website. The NFA that is managing the highest forest area is Metsähallitus (Finland), with more than 9 million hectares. As regards the average annual harvested wood quantity, the NFA from Poland, namely LASY PAŃSTWOWE, is the leader, with more than 37 million cubic meters. Based on these results, it seems that the highest share of managed forests per one employee was recorded in the countries situated in the northern part of Europe, namely Norway, Finland and Sweden. ROMSILVA, together with the NFAs from Germany and England ranked on the last positions as regards the share of the managed forest area by one employee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface fuel loading is a key factor in controlling wildfires and planning sustainable forest management. Spatially explicit maps of surface fuel loading can highlight the risks of a forest fire. Geospatial information is critical in enabling careful use of deliberate fire setting and also helps to minimize the possibility of heat conduction over forest lands. In contrast to lidar sensing and/or optical sensing based methods, an approach of integrating in-situ fuel inventory data, geospatial interpolation techniques, and multiple linear regression methods provides an alternative approach to surface fuel load estimation and mapping over mountainous forests. Using a stratified random sampling based inventory and cokriging analysis, surface fuel loading data of 120 plots distributed over four kinds of fuel types were collected in order to develop a total surface fuel loading model (lntSFL-BioTopo model) and a fine surface fuel model (lnfSFL-BioTopo model) for generating tSFL and fSFL maps. Results showed that the combination of topographic parameters such as slope, aspect, and their cross products and the fuel types such as pine stand, non-pine conifer stand, broadleaf stand, and conifer–broadleaf mixed stand was able to appropriately describe the changes in surface fuel loads over a forest with diverse terrain morphology. Based on a cross-validation method, the estimation of tSFL and fSFL of the study site had an RMSE of 3.476 tons/ha and 3.384 tons/ha, respectively. In contrast to the average loading of all inventory plots, the estimation for tSFL and fSFL had a relative error of 38% (PRMSE). The reciprocal of estimation bias of both SFL-BioTopo models tended to be an exponential growth function of the amount of surface fuel load, indicating that the estimation accuracy of the proposed method is likely to be improved with further study. In the regression modeling, a natural logarithm transformation of the surface fuel loading prevented the outcome of negative estimates and thus improved the estimation. Based on the results, this paper defined a minimum sampling unit (MSU) as the area for collecting surface fuels for interpolation using a cokriging model. Allocating the MSUs at the boundary and center of a plot improved surface fuel load prediction and mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forestry 4.0 is inspired by the Industry 4.0 concept, which plays a vital role in the next industrial generation revolution. It is ushering in a new era for efficient and sustainable forest management. Environmental sustainability and climate change are related challenges to promote sustainable forest management of natural resources. Internet of Forest Things (IoFT) is an emerging technology that helps manage forest sustainability and protect forest from hazards via distributing smart devices for gathering data stream during monitoring and detecting fire. Stream processing is a well-known research area, and recently, it has gained a further significance due to the emergence of IoFT devices. Distributed stream processing platforms have emerged, e.g., Apache Flink, Storm, and Spark, etc. Querying windowing is the heart of any stream-processing platform which splits infinite data stream into chunks of finite data to execute a query. Dynamic query window-based processing can reduce the reporting time in case of missing and delayed events caused by data drift.In this paper, we present a novel dynamic mechanism to recommend the optimal window size and type based on the dynamic context of IoFT application. In particular, we designed a dynamic window selector for stream queries considering input stream data characteristics, application workload and resource constraints to recommend the optimal stream query window configuration. A research gap on the likelihood of adopting smart IoFT devices in environmental sustainability indicates a lack of empirical studies to pursue forest sustainability, i.e., sustainable forestry applications. So, we focus on forest fire management and detection as a use case of Forestry 4.0, one of the dynamic environmental management challenges, i.e., climate change, to deliver sustainable forestry goals. According to the dynamic window selector's experimental results, end-to-end latency time for the reported fire alerts has been reduced by dynamical adaptation of window size with IoFT stream rate changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest management has been recognized as a significant challenge for various scientific fields, namely because the difficulties in creating employment and economic dynamics in the forestry sector. Actually, it is not easy to generate more returns, in this sector, for the land owners, in addition to the production of wood after several years, depending on the produced species. In general, these difficulties lead to the land abandonment and a large set of associated problems like the forest fires. The main objective of this research is therefore to highlight the main insights from the literature related with the forest entrepreneurship, as supports for the several stakeholders, namely the policymakers, stressing the main gaps in the current scientific literature. In this paper, we have developed a bibliometric analysis through the VOSviewer software, complemented with a literature review, considering 83 articles obtained from the Web of Science (core collection) and Scopus related with the topic of 'forest' and 'entrepreneurship'. We detailed the networks of Journals, Countries, Terms and Authors that have been researching and publishing in the scientific domains of 'forest entrepreneurship'. Additionally, we studied measures of social networks analysis for each case. This kind of analysis for these topics has a particular novelty, because there is still a significant scarcity of studies addressing these approaches. In fact, searching, for example, in WOS (all databases) for the topics 'forest', 'entrepreneurship' and 'bibliometric' we found zero documents (the same for Scopus platform, considering the article title, abstract and keywords). We concluded that the recent field of 'forest entrepreneurship' has allowed a higher level of co-authorships and a lower level of centrality in the citations' network. We identified, also, that there are some gaps in the scientific literature, namely related with the few multidisciplinary networks outside the forest sciences in these topics. Finally, we observed that these topics are related with authors who, on average, published with 9 co-authors along their career and that authors working on the most generic topic of 'forest' tend to have 17 different co-authors, reinforcing the characteristics of 'forestry entrepreneurship' as a relevant but emerging scientific field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The impact of initial economic development on forest transition is analyzed. • The study covers the period 1990–2015. • A Forest Recovery Index is proposed. • The potentially different levels of biodiversity of differently managed forests are appraised. • Results imply the existence of an N-shaped curve in the context of forest recovery. Compared to the solid understanding of the role of deforestation drivers, related knowledge about transitions in global forests is less developed, although numerous nations and sub-national regions are experiencing ongoing forest recovery. In this paper, the focus is on countries in which forest cover increased between 1990 and 2015. We analyze whether a level of initial economic development can be identified that might explain this positive trend. By combining qualitative and quantitative techniques (ecological modelling and an expert survey), a Forest Recovery Index is introduced that accounts for the fact that dissimilar forest management regimes have different impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The link between the Forest Recovery Index and the 1990 level of GDP per capita is analyzed with instrumental variable regression. The results of our integrated ecological-economic models support the existence of an N-shaped curve in the context of forest recovery, implying that the quality and quantity of new forests in middle-income countries has increased to the least extent. In other words, although the outcomes suggest optimism in the long term, caution is needed as the first turning point (a decrease in forest recovery), unlike the second, may fairly easy to be reached. In spite of overall increases in the extent of forests, negative trends – rearrangements that favor less valuable types of forest – appear to be persistent. While transitions are important in terms of the need to sequester carbon, governments should (in line with the Aichi Targets) place greater emphasis on forest biodiversity during transition management to ensure the provision of a wider array of ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The relationship between forest patterns and LST is sensitive to spatial extent. • The amount of vegetation accounts for more variations in LST than configuration. • The correlation between LST and urban forest patterns was strongest in summer. • A multi-scale analysis is recommended and necessary for similar study. The effects of spatial pattern of urban greenspace on land surface temperature (LST) have been extensively documented. Previous studies have confirmed that the relationship between urban green spatial pattern and LST is sensitive to spatial resolution and remote sensing imagery with higher resolution could be more accurate on quantifying the urban green patterns, but little is known about another scaling issue—spatial extent. This paper examined whether the spatial extent applied to derive landscape metrics affect the relationship between LST and spatial pattern of urban forested areas of highly urbanized Shanghai and the seasonal variations using correlation analyses and regression analyses. Spatial pattern of forested areas was measured with eight class-level landscape metrics over four spatial extents/scales (90 m × 90 m, 180 m × 180 m, 360 m × 360 m and 720 m × 720 m) using moving-window approach based on a land-use and land cover (LULC) map derived from SPOT 6 datasets. Results demonstrated that changing spatial extent had significant impacts on the relationship between spatial pattern of urban forested areas and LST. The responses of correlations between spatial pattern metrics and LST to changing extent fell into three categories: correlation decreases with extent increases, correlation increases with extent increases and unpredictable pattern. In general, the amount of forested cover accounts for greater variability in LST than its spatial arrangement. This study extended our scientific understanding of the effects of spatial pattern of urban forested area on LST. In addition, it can provide insights for urban forest planning and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine an example of a conservation conflict that is encountered in Ireland arising from the designation of Special Protection Areas (SPAs) for the Hen Harrier under the European Birds Directive (Directive, 2009/147/EC) and the consequent restrictions that are placed on forestry activities within these SPAs. We examine the causes of the Hen Harrier-forestry conflict; identify what stakeholders believe are the policy instruments and management strategies that may be useful in managing the conflict and finally identify plausible solutions that may be relevant to similar conflicts around multi-functional forests elsewhere in Europe and globally. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with key actors in this conflict. Drawing on Walker and Daniels' conflict triangle theory, a qualitative analysis of the transcripts of these interviews revealed that the conflict between Hen Harrier conservation and forestry in Ireland has a number of deep-rooted dimensions including those relating to the substance (e.g. restrictions on forest management activity in the SPAs), as well as procedural (e.g. lack of stakeholder engagement) and relationship dimensions (e.g. lack of trust). The polarisation of views in this conflict testifies to how entrenched stakeholders can become through lack of communication and trust. The policy instruments that stakeholders identified as having potential to address the conflict include the introduction of incentives/compensation scheme; changes to restrictions; more data and research on Hen Harrier bird surveys; implementation of landscape management models; and better communication and stakeholder engagement. The study highlights that conservation conflicts persist due to the multi-functional nature of forests and also due to repeated mistakes in terms of the lack of engagement with local stakeholders. Increasing the involvement of local actors has important substantive and instrumental benefits including improving the quality of decisions, as well as creating a greater chance of policies being better socially and politically acceptable. The need for more and better capacity-building across EU Member States for statutory and government agencies to learn from one another in terms of how to avoid repeating the same mistakes from one site to another is highlighted. • A forestry and conservation conflict is examined. • The conflict has substance, procedural and relationship dimensions. • Stakeholder hold very polarised views. • Lack of communication and trust are major issues. • Stakeholders share a common interest and goal in terms of conservation and incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determining appropriate management strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions using optimization techniques to understand how forest management activities affect the carbon dynamics is critical in implementing effective carbon management policies. This paper quantitatively analyzes the long-term effects of different management policies and silvicultural interventions using linear programming. In the analyses, afforestation targets for bare forest lands, tree species, carbon prices, planning approaches and sets of various targets and constraints on carbon dynamics were evaluated. The results were based on twenty-five forest management scenarios formulated for the Korucu Forest Planning Unit of Turkey. The results showed that, compared to timber-based planning strategies (TM), ecosystem-based planning approach (EM) contributes to a significant reduction in carbon sequestration in many cases. When different afforestation targets were incorporated into forest management strategies, cumulative carbon sequestration increased constantly compared to baseline scenario without any afforestation areas. In addition, the highest total carbon sequestration was observed when black pine (P. nigra) was used in afforestation activities rather than oak species (Quercus sp.) and other available tree species. While total timber production and timber net present value (NPV) decreased, carbon sequestration increased significantly with increasing carbon price. As a result of increasing carbon price from $20/ton to $100/ton, joint NPV increased by about five times. The results highlighted the importance of forest ecosystem and developing and implementing climate adaption measures into forest management activities in tackling climate change phenomenon. • Determining suitable management scenarios is critical for effective carbon policies. • Ecosystem management generally causes a significant reduction in carbon value. • Carbon economy is highly critical for the timber and carbon production. • Afforestation in suitable areas provides significant contribution to carbon stocks. • Afforestation with P.nigra is more effective for C stock than with Quercus sp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic 3D forest mapping and individual tree characteristics estimation are essential for forest management and ecosystem maintenance. The low-cost unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) laser scanning (ULS) is a newly developed tool for cost-effectively collecting 3D information and attempts to use it for 3D forest mapping have been made, due to its capability to provide 3D information with a lower cost and higher flexibility than the standard ULS and airborne laser scanning (ALS). As the direct georeferenced point clouds may suffer from distortion caused by the poor performance of a low-cost inertial measurement unit (IMU), and 3D forest mapping using low-cost ULS poses a great challenge. Therefore, this paper utilized global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and IMU aided Structure-from-Motion (SfM) for trajectory estimation, and, hence, overcomes the poor performance of low-cost IMUs. The accuracy of the low-cost ULS point clouds was compared with the ground truth data collected by a commercial ULS system. Furthermore, the effectiveness of individual trees segmentation and tree characteristics estimation derived from the low-cost ULS point clouds were accessed. Experiments were undertaken in Dongtai forest farm, Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, China. The results showed that the low-cost ULS achieved good point clouds quality from visual inspection and comparable individual tree segmentation results (P = 0.87, r = 0.84, F = 0.85) with the commercial system. Individual tree height estimation performed well (coefficient of determination (R2) = 0.998, root-mean-square error (RMSE) = 0.323 m) using the low-cost ULS. As for individual tree crown diameter estimation, low-cost ULS achieved good results (R2 = 0.806, RMSE = 0.195 m) after eliminating outliers. In general, such results illustrated the high potential of the low-cost ULS in 3D forest mapping, even though 3D forest mapping using the low-cost ULS requires further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest ecosystems provide critical ecosystem goods and services, and any disturbance-induced changes can have cascading impacts on natural processes and human socioeconomic systems. Forest disturbance frequency, intensity, and spatial and temporal scale can be altered by changes in climate and human activity, but without baseline forest disturbance data, it is impossible to quantify the magnitude and extent of these changes. Methodologies for quantifying forest cover change have been developed at the regional-to-global scale via several approaches that utilize data from high (e.g., IKONOS, Quickbird), moderate (e.g., Landsat) and coarse (e.g., Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)) spatial resolution satellite imagery. While detection and quantification of forest cover change is an important first step, attribution of disturbance type is critical missing information for establishing baseline data and effective land management policy. The objective here was to prototype and test a semi-automated methodology for characterizing high-magnitude (>50% forest cover loss) forest disturbance agents (stress, fire, stem removal) across the conterminous United States (CONUS) from 2003–2011 using the existing University of Maryland Landsat-based Global Forest Change Product and Web-Enabled Landsat Data (WELD). The Forest Cover Change maps were segmented into objects based on temporal and spatial adjacency, and object-level spectral metrics were calculated based on WELD reflectance time series. A training set of objects with known disturbance type was developed via high-resolution imagery and expert interpretation, ingested into a Random Forest classifier, which was then used to attribute disturbance type to all 15,179,430 forest loss objects across CONUS. Accuracy assessments of the resulting classification was conducted with an independent dataset consisting of 4156 forest loss objects. Overall accuracy was 88.1%, with the highest omission and commission errors observed for fire (32.8%) and stress (31.9%) disturbances, respectively. Of the total 172,686 km2 of forest loss, 83.75% was attributed to stem removal, 10.92% to fire and 5.33% to stress. The semi-automated approach described in this paper provides a promising framework for the systematic characterization and monitoring of forest disturbance regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]