Forest Area Research Articles

Challenges for a Brazilian Amazonian bioeconomy based on forest foods

The creation of a forest bioeconomy based on the extraction of non-timber forest products (NTFP) is being recommended to create wealth from standing forests and halt deforestation in Amazonia. Current proposals do not recognize the limits of this system, nor the impacts of capitalism that drive NTFPs with elastic demand into monoculture plantations. We use a narrative review to revisit the history of these ideas and examine public policies. Among 2,253 Amazonian NTFPs, 1,037 produce edible fruits and 131 of these are extremely abundant (hyperdominant) across the biome and common in the extractive economy. Low productivity per hectare in the forest, low return on labor to harvest the production, and scarcity of labor are three critical limits to expanding supply, with the last being the most critical in forest areas. Overcoming these limitations requires changes in public policies and public investment for health care, communication, logistics, and especially for quality education designed for rural areas and a forest bioeconomy. A mix of public policies to alleviate market failures and increase supply, efficiency, and demand via R&D, minimum prices, payment for environmental services, distinct types of certifications may be able to make food NTFP harvesting, processing, and commercialization lucrative enough to halt rural exodus and keep forest specialists in standing forests. An Amazonian forest bioeconomy depends upon both social and biodiversity, and the full participation and collaboration of Indigenous People and local communities in developing these value chains that can contribute to food security.

Đánh giá hiện trạng môi trường đất khu vực đất ngập nước xã Đồng Rui, huyện Tiên Yên, tỉnh Quảng Ninh

Wetland ecosystems play the most important role but are also vulnerable under economic evelopment activities in estuarine and coastal areas. The quality of the soil environment is an important parameter to assess human impacts on this ecosystem environment. In this study, 28 soil and sediment samples of different types of land use were collected and analyzed with physical indicators (mechanized action, pH, salinity), nutrient indicators (N total, P total, OC, Ca2+, Mg2+) to assess the current state of the soil environment in Dong Rui commune. The results showed a large difference in land indicator groups between 2 groups of land use types distributed inside and outside the levee. For the quality of soil environment in the group of types outside dikes such as river sediments and mangrove soils, the pH value is at a less acidic level, the composition is mainly sand, organic content, high exchange cations. For the group of land use types located inside the dike, the pH value is at the acidity level, the grain level composition is more balanced, the organic content and the ability to exchange cations is low. This difference shows the extent of human impact on these wetlands as well as their natural resilience, particularly in restored forest areas in abandoned shrimp lagoons. This is an important solution in the management and restoration of wetlands in Dong Rui commune.

Time-lag effects of habitat loss, but not fragmentation, on deadwood-dwelling lichens

ContextLandscape habitat amount is known to increase biodiversity, while the effects of habitat fragmentation are still debated. It has been suggested that negative fragmentation effects may occur with a time lag, which could explain inconsistent results. However, there is so far no empirical support for this idea.ObjectivesWe evaluated whether habitat amount and fragmentation at the landscape scale affect the species density of deadwood-dwelling lichens, and whether these effects occur with a time lag.MethodsWe surveyed deadwood-dwelling lichens in woodland key habitats in two regions in northern Sweden, and modelled their species density as a function of past (1960s) and present (2010s) habitat amount (old forest area) and fragmentation (edge density) in the surrounding landscapes.ResultsPresent habitat amount generally had weak positive effects on lichen species density. Positive effects of the past habitat amount were stronger, indicating a time lag in habitat amount effects. Habitat fragmentation effects were generally weak and similar whether fragmentation was measured in the past or the present landscapes, indicating no time lag in fragmentation effects.ConclusionsWe found a time lag effect of habitat amount, but not fragmentation. This result is not consistent with suggestions that time lags explain the mixed observations of fragmentation effects. Time-lag effects of habitat amount suggest that the studied lichen communities face an extinction debt. Conservation should therefore prioritize increasing the amount of old forest, for example by creating forest reserves, to maintain the current lichen diversity. More generally, our results imply that studies examining only the present habitat amount risk under-estimating its importance.

BAMFORESTS: Bamberg Benchmark Forest Dataset of Individual Tree Crowns in Very-High-Resolution UAV Images

The anthropogenic climate crisis results in the gradual loss of tree species in locations where they were previously able to grow. This leads to increasing workloads and requirements for foresters and arborists as they are forced to restructure their forests and city parks. The advancements in computer vision (CV)—especially in supervised deep learning (DL)—can help cope with these new tasks. However, they rely on large, carefully annotated datasets to produce good and generalizable models. This paper presents BAMFORESTS: a dataset with 27,160 individually delineated tree crowns in 105 ha of very-high-resolution UAV imagery gathered with two different sensors from two drones. BAMFORESTS covers four areas of coniferous, mixed, and deciduous forests and city parks. The labels contain instance segmentations of individual trees, and the proposed splits are balanced by tree species and vitality. Furthermore, the dataset contains the corrected digital surface model (DSM), representing tree heights. BAMFORESTS is annotated in the COCO format and is especially suited for training deep neural networks (DNNs) to solve instance segmentation tasks. BAMFORESTS was created in the BaKIM project and is freely available under the CC BY 4.0 license.

Birch distribution and changes in stand structure in Sweden’s young forests

ABSTRACT Silver birch (Betula pendula Roth) and downy birch (Betula pubescens Ehrh.) are the two most common broadleaf species in Sweden, together making up approximately 12% of the standing timber volume. The two birch species are usually not distinguished in practice, although they tend to differ in terms of volume production, timber quality, and site preferences. To map the proportion of the two birch species in Sweden’s young forests, we used survey data from 123 stands 6–7 years after clearfelling, and data from Sweden’s meteorological and hydrological institute. We also examined Sweden’s young forests in terms of area, volume, and stem density between 1983 and 2021, using national forest inventory data. Proportions of the two birch species varied significantly across Sweden, and the average temperature sum over the first five years after clearfelling explained 72% of the variation. There was no significant change in area of forest classified as young forest in Sweden, over the last four decades, although there was a significant increase in volume and stem density in Sweden’s young forests, with birch making up most of the increase in stem numbers.

Reproductive biology of Senna spectabilis (DC.) H.S.Irwin & Barneby (Fabaceae) - an invasive tree species in the tropical forests of the Western Ghats, India

Senna spectabilis (DC.) H.S.Irwin & Barneby is an invasive tree species native to tropical America and is commonly found in the forest areas of Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary. Its aggressive growth rate and ability to quickly cover up open and degraded lands in forest ecosystems make it challenging to control its spread. Reproductive studies of S. spectabilis and its pollen-ovule ratio indicate this species is cross-pollinating. The species is self-compatible, owing to the simultaneous occurrence of xenogamy, geitonogamy and autogamy. This reproductive strategy helps the taxon to colonise degraded areas and invade the forest ecosystem. The anthesis is diurnal and sometimes asynchronous. Peak insect visitors were observed from 0900 h to 1230 h, with the major visitor being Tetragonula iridipennis. Xylocopa violaceae was also a regular visitor along with resident Formicidae members, such as Oecophylla smaragdina and Myrmicaria brunnae. They feed on the floral parts, like tender petals and sepals. The reproductive syndrome of this plant favours maximum fertilization.

Floristic Diversity and Green-Tree Retention in Intensively Managed Temperate Forests: A Case Study in Puebla, Mexico

Clearcutting has tended to simplify forest structure and species composition, with potential negative consequences for biodiversity. Retention forestry emerged as an alternative to minimize this concern in intensively managed forests. In central Mexico, this approach was first implemented a decade ago in temperate forests, but an examination of its effects on floristic diversity and composition is non-existent. We evaluated and compared richness, diversity, and floristic composition among harvested, retention, and conserved areas in a conifer-dominated forest of central Mexico, with various parametric and non-parametric analyses. Species’ ecological and structural importance was also evaluated. We recorded 138 species, 95 genera, and 44 families of plants. Harvested areas listed the most species (99) with herb dominance, tree homogeneity, and the highest number of exotics. Retention and conserved areas’ floristic composition was similar, with the presence of epiphytes and terrestrial orchids, considered indicators of conservation. The retention areas recorded rare and endangered species, tree heterogeneity, and juveniles of structural species of temperate forests. Conserved areas showed a greater number of structural mature elements and exclusive species, though there was a smaller species number (75). We demonstrated that retention forestry is achieving its goal by maintaining the structural elements, habitats, and plant diversity of the temperate forests analyzed.

Mitigation of Mangrove Forest Destruction in East Kalimantan Province

The present study was proposed to answer the problem of mangrove forest destruction through various policies of the East Kalimantan Regional government by using the literature study method followed up through Focus group discussion. As a result of this research, the implementation of policies carried out by the East Kalimantan Provincial Government can now be said to be successful, although there are still indicators that need to be improved, such as in the resource variable. Moreover, it was found that there were still problems that occurred with the management of the Mangrove Forest area in the previous government. There are recommendations from the results of this research to conduct a joint evaluation with the Central Government regarding the policy of private sector activity programmes, and there must be supervision after planting. Provisions in sectoral laws related to natural resources, apart from those that specifically regulate environmental protection as in Law 32/2009, are regulated in various forms.

Assessment of plant biodiversity in tropical dry forests of Sialkot, Pakistan; insight into environmental, anthropogenic influence and conservation strategies

The tropical dry forests (TDF) have an enormously rich flora and fauna that offer various ecological services to the surrounding human societies. Biodiversity assessment is mandatory for implementing any sustainable forest management policy, which is why it is one of the important criteria and indicators currently used. Threats to TDF biodiversity are the primary challenges arising from environmental concerns caused by anthropogenic activity leading to global warming issues. The study aimed to investigate the vegetation assessment and several environmental and anthropogenic variables influencing forest biodiversity from 5 threatened forest sites of District Sialkot (Ghalotian, Kishan Garh, Daburgi Chanda Singh, Pir Kot, and Ghulab Garh), Pakistan. We collected 170 distinct plant species, including 135 dicots, 27 monocots, seven pteridophytes, and one bryophyte, categorized into 138 genera and 62 families, divided into 114 herbs, 32 trees, and 24 shrubs. The phytosociological analysis described the quantitative characteristics, including % frequency, % density, % cover, and importance Value Index (IVI) of all forest areas. Gulab Garh forest has the richest biodiversity forest area, and herbs are the dominant species that have been documented. Environmental factors such as temperature, precipitation, organic matter, soil pH, Ca+2, Mg+2, Na+, Cl−, and electric conductivity (EC) strongly affect forest vegetation investigated by principal coordinate analysis. Shannon and Simpson’s diversity indexes reveal that all sites contain loamy and sandy soil and display a significant relationship between alpha diversity and richness. Increasing trends in temperature and decreasing trends in rainfall suggested that climate significantly affects the Sialkot region’s plant biodiversity. SWOT analysis highlighted that population growth leads to increasing anthropogenic activities such as constructing housing societies and roads, inadequate farming, and excessive grazing, impacting the forest vegetation and altering TDF ecosystem properties/services and functioning. Our findings reinforce the vegetational assessment and importance of local forest biodiversity and significant environmental drivers that influence the plant species diversity in TDF areas. Future conservation strategies are suggested to reduce unlawful resource consumption, restore plant biodiversity in designated protected areas, and conserve rare species locally.

Farmer-Agropastoralist Conflict Escalation in Morogoro Region, Tanzania: A Structural and Process Analysis

In Africa, access to natural resources such as land, water, forest, and wildlife reserve areas is a key factor for socio-economic development. The scarcity and degradation of these resources in rural environments threaten human security, leading to conflicts. Conflicts between agropastoralists and farmers are increasing in Tanzania. This research deployed the Social Conflict Theory that embeds structural and process elements to address the question of why and how the conflict between farmers and agropastoralists has escalated into deadly violence in the Morogoro region, Tanzania. Qualitative and ethnographic research methods were used. Results demonstrate that the way farmers lose their land by illegal means (e.g., bribes, force and coercion, and deception and stealth) is a critical factor that contributes more to land resource conflicts. We argue that land resource-related conflicts in Tanzania cannot be explained solely by a single driver (e.g., limited land resources), but by a combination of drivers including the illegal mechanisms used to control access to land resources. Conflicts between farmers and agropastoralists in the Morogoro region escalated to violence following the general patterns and transformation dynamics (i.e., process variables) described in Social Conflict Theory. These process variables involve tactics shifting from light to heavy, goals shifting from specific to general, and involvement shifting from few to many. The analysis of conflicts by focusing on process variables (conflict dynamics) enabled the identification of new factors (culture and age of participant in the conflict) that helped explain why some conflicts between farmers and agropastoralists escalate to deadly violence. The study recommends the formation of a loose coalition (e.g., Elders’ Tribunal) which includes equal representation of members from the farmer and agropastoralist communities which may help solve the current conundrum caused by top-down administrative procedures and practices, which often leads to outcomes that are ineffective and unsatisfactory to all parties

What remains to be discovered: A global assessment of tree species inventory completeness

AbstractAimRecent unprecedented efforts to digitise and mobilise biodiversity data have resulted in the generation of ‘biodiversity big data’, enabling ecological research at scales previously not possible. However, gaps, biases and uncertainties in these data influence analytical outcomes and the validity of scientific research and conservation actions. Here, we estimated tree species inventory completeness globally and identified where future surveys should focus to maximise regional inventories.LocationGlobal.MethodsWe analysed spatial patterns in sampling effort of tree species occurrence records from the Global Biodiversity and Information Facility (GBIF) and estimated global tree species inventory completeness for 100 × 100 km grid cells (sampling units) and ecoregions. We also identified forested areas for future botanical exploration, by examining the spatial overlap between inventory completeness, remaining natural habitat and protected areas and degrees of forest modification by anthropogenic pressure (forest integrity).ResultsSpatial patterns in sampling effort and tree species inventory completeness were unevenly distributed around the world. Only 35% of ecoregions and 18% of sampling units can be considered well surveyed, most of which were concentrated in the Global North, including Europe, North America and Australia. Large areas in species‐rich tropical regions, especially in Southeast Asia, remained poorly documented. Moreover, our results showed that many areas with low inventory completeness overlapped with ecoregions retaining less than 50% of natural habitat and protected land area, as well as sampling units with low forest integrity.Main ConclusionsDue to limitations in biodiversity data, simply sampling more will not necessarily lead to increasing knowledge. We illustrated how gaps in these data can be used to improve existing knowledge by identifying priority areas for future surveys. With ongoing anthropogenic impacts and escalating rates of biodiversity loss, limited resources should be allocated to strategically survey regions likely to yield new knowledge and improve biodiversity representativeness.

Study of the Spatial Distribution of the Bark Beetle in the Ejido Tixtlancingo

The spatial distribution of Dendroctonus frontalis Zimmermann, 1868, and Dendroctonus mexicanus Hopkins, 1905, was determined from 2020 to 2021 in the Tixtlancingo ejido. The information came from two surveys because, despite the abundant forested areas in this geographical area of the state of Guerrero, Mexico, economic resources for pest biomonitoring are limited. However, it was possible to identify the presence of 76 outbreaks affecting 1117.697 hectares and 95,078 trees, totaling 14,223.8 m3 of standing timber volume. In 2020, 28 outbreaks were reported, with the eastern spatial distribution showing the most damage from bark beetles, particularly in outbreaks 7 and 14 of the surveyed area. The most affected conifers were Pinus maximinoi H. E. Moore (44.71%), Pinus oocarpa Schiede ex Schltdl. (39.93%), and Pinus pseudostrobus Lindl. (15.36%). The affected timber volume was observed in diameter categories of 30 cm for the three pine species, with infestation of 90,549 trees (13,497.6 m3 t.t.v. (total tree volume)) across 1057.64 hectares. In 2021, 48 outbreaks were recorded, with the northeastern and southern parts of the surveyed area showing the most damage from the bark beetle. The trees most affected by the bark beetle were P. oocarpa (59.17%), P. maximinoi (33.94%), and P. pseudostrobus (6.89%). It was observed that the affected volume occurred in trees with diameter categories of 50 cm for the three pine species, affecting 4529 trees (726.214 m3 t.t.v.) distributed over 60.06 hectares. The contribution of this work lies in establishing a baseline for monitoring damage caused by this beetle, which affects forest resources and diminishes the possibility of maintaining carbon capture areas in the medium and long term, thus impacting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 agenda, specifically Goals 11, 13, and 15.

Suitable forestry machines for mechanical fuel load reduction and salvage recovery: a short review

Forest fires are one of the most severe incidents that can destroy large areas of forest lands and cause substantial damages to the nearby residential areas and farmlands. Human efforts to reduce the likelihood of starting forest fires include prescribed burning, mechanical fuel load reduction and livestock grazing. Following natural disasters in forest areas, a salvage recovery operation is usually conducted that may cause some environmental impacts. This article aimed to review the literatures to provide a summary of different types of machines and working methods that have been studied in different countries. The review results showed that the most common method for mechanical fuel load reduction was mechanised cut-to-length using a harvester and a forwarder. This method has been widely applied in Canada, USA, Europe, and Oceania. In some countries (e.g. Australia and USA) the whole tree method is also applied for mechanical fuel load reduction. This method was often conducted using feller-bunchers, grapple skidders and chippers/grinders. The majority of mechanical fuel load reduction projects produced the extra fibre which could be used for bioenergy purposes. The number of salvage recovery studies was limited compared with studies on mechanical fuel load reduction. Salvage recovery operations applied a cut-to-length and whole tree harvesting methods. Windthrown trees were extracted to the roadside using heavy size forwarders or grapple skidders in flat/moderate terrains while tower yarders were applied in steep terrains. Detailed information on work productivity is described in this article which can be of use to the academic and industrial users. 

Land cover change assessment in Thai Nguyen Province, Vietnam using GIS and remote sensing techniques

The expansion of agricultural production and urbanization has led to the depletion of the global forest ecosystem, resulting in land cover changes (LCCs) that pose threats to the land environment. Therefore, it is imperative to identify these LCCs as an essential step toward resolution and mitigation. This study aims to evaluate temporal LCCs in Thai Nguyen province by utilizing GIS and remote sensing techniques (RST) to analyze high-resolution satellite imagery spanning from 2001 to 2023. LCCs were identified using semi-automatic classification plugin (SCP) techniques with Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 images in ERVI software. The accuracy of the LCC maps was validated through post-classification comparisons, yielding high precision rates ranging from 87% to 96%. The results indicate a significant reduction in forest cover area, declining by 1018 ha from 226,18 ha in 2001 to 207,22 ha in 2023. This decline primarily occurred in urban areas, highlighting the intensification of urbanization processes. Cultivated and bare land experienced a minor decrease and a substantial decrease from 18,631 ha and 105,000 ha to 16,578 ha and 86,82 ha between 2001 and 2010, followed by a slight increase and a significant increase to 5,069 ha and 24,487 ha (1.4% and 6.9%) during the 2010-2023 period. These findings underscore the escalating risk of diminishing forest cover in the study area.

Machine Learning based approach for Diabetes Prediction

Diabetes is an illness brought on by an excessive amount of glucose within the body. Ignorance of diabetes is no longer acceptable. If neglected, it may also result in more severe health concerns for a person, such as heart-related problems, renal problems, blood pressure, eye damage, and effects on other body organs. Insulin hormone is affected, which leads to abnormal crab metabolism and elevates blood sugar levels. According to the World Health Organization, 422 million people worldwide suffer with diabetes. low- and middle-class people being disproportionately affected. The condition is caused by the body producing insufficient amounts of insulin. Additionally, this might reach 490 billion by 2030. To benefit from this challenging job, we may apply ensemble techniques and system learning for classification on this image to forecast whether diabetes will be present in a dataset. When comparing one version to another, the accuracy varies depending on the model. The assignment provides the accurate or improved accuracy version, indicating that the model can effectively predict diabetes. Our findings demonstrate that random forested areas outperformed other system mastery strategies in terms of accuracy. Keywords: Classification Algorithms, Supervised Learning, Unsupervised Learning, Random forest

Ratcheting up private standards by exploiting coopetition: The curious case of RSPO’s adoption of zero-deforestation criteria

At its November 2018 annual meeting, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) approved a new version of its foundational rules that advocates argued made it a zero-deforestation standard. Using a combination of over 160 key informant interviews and archival analysis, we argue that actors in the RSPO orbit made the High Carbon Stock Approach - a new method for defining forest boundaries that features heavy use of satellite data - attractive by blending cooperative and competitive strategies in a pattern known as coopetition. Critical stakeholders pushed leading companies into a competition for legitimacy that spurred innovations outside of the Roundtable setting. In turn, however, these firms also used relationships established through the RSPO Roundtable - cooperating - to elaborate guidelines and tools for defining forest areas, pursuing supply chain traceability and engaging in supplier transformation. This cooperation helped zero-deforestation strategies to emerge outside the organization. In response, stakeholders with sunk investments in RSPO membership reincorporated those external tools into the standard by framing them as consistent with the institution's fundamental logics. This case provides a compelling example of how coopetition can lead to norm emergence in a contentious governance arena, allowing a combination of internal and external actors to steer institutional development. We argue that this strategy could be employed to stimulate increased rigor in environmental standards.

Effectiveness assessment of protected areas based on the states, trends, and relative changes in forest ecosystem: a case study in the Three Parallel Rivers Region, China

Establishing protected areas (PAs) is a major measure of biodiversity conservation, and various methods have been explored to assess PAs’ effectiveness. However, those methods mainly compared the relative changes in land cover between treated samples inside the PAs and their matched samples outside the PAs, which would produce misjudgments, especially in some climax communities with a relatively steady state. Thus, in this study, we constructed an integrated framework through a series of assessments according to the state, trend, and relative change of each PA to explore the conservation effectiveness of PAs in the Three Parallel Rivers Region in China from 2000 to 2020. Here, “state” refers to the difference among samples from within and outside the PA, assessed through yearly sample mean comparison. “Trend” means linear regression of mean forest area of each PA throughout the assessment period. “Relative change” means the difference in the mean value of the slope of forest changes between the treated samples inside each PA and their matched control samples outside of PAs. The entire forest area within all PAs in the Three Parallel Rivers Region showed a significant increasing trend from 2000 to 2020 (R2 = 0.919, P<0.05). Among all the PAs, twelve (86%) had a positive effect on protecting the forest ecosystem, and two had a nonsignificant effect. Among the factors affecting the state and relative change in PAs’ forests, the annual total precipitation was the most important, followed by distance to the nearest road. Moreover, the management-level variable was an essential factor in the state of PAs’ forest ecosystems, which indicated that national PAs (nature reserves and natural parks) were in a better state than local (provincial- and county-level) nature reserves. Overall, the conservation effectiveness of forests in PAs was assessed at a regional scale in the Three Parallel Rivers Region, implying that our framework would be additional useful in regions with high biodiversity and steady ecosystems. This framework better avoids underestimating conservation effectiveness assessment tasks than traditional methods do. Thus, we posit that this framework is suitable for future global or country-level assessments.

A landscape index for indicating the spatio-temporal dynamics of carbon storage in an opencast coal mine

Coal is China’s main resource, with open-pit mining accounting for a significant portion of global production. However, this activity, including mining and ecological restoration, can have a definite impact on ecosystem carbon storage and its distribution; its associated factors are also unclear. In this paper, we quantify the carbon storage changes in Haerwusu coal mine, a typical large-scale coal mine in China, based on land use/land cover (LULC) characteristics, and analyze the impact factors of carbon density from 2007 to 2022 by integrating the InVEST model with the landscape ecological function contribution ratio and multiple regression model. The results are as follows. (1) Carbon storage decreased from 159.95 × 104 to 147.51 × 104 from 2007 to 2017 and then increased to 151.91 × 104 to 2022. (2) The degree of coordination between carbon storage forest and grassland area landscape pattern coupling ranged from 0.887 to 0.867 from 2007 to 2022, with the lowest point at 0.720 in 2012. (3) Carbon storage was significantly related to vegetation indices, temperature, and elevation, and these factors can explain 37.5% of the carbon storage spatial variability; stepwise regression analysis showed that the integration of landscape patterns, such as Shannon’s diversity index (SHEI) and the aggregation index (AI), could improve the explanation by 1.4%. (4) Based on the analysis of the landscape ecological function contribution ratio, the carbon storage-sensitive areas can be classified into three levels: extremely sensitive areas ranging 0 to 4 km from the mine, sensitive areas ranging 4 to 8 km, and insensitive areas ranging beyond 8 km. This study proposes a strategy for analyzing changes of carbon storage in coal mines, highlights the important role of landscape patterns in influencing carbon storage, and provides a reliable reference support for the ecological management of coal mines.

Inter-Relationship between Certain Unfamiliar Animals and Plants

Living in an environment totally devoid of green vegetation, man turns crazy as is often experienced by scientists who have to live in the white wilderness of the Arctic ice-cap. They create artificial cardboard conifers to soothen the famished eye. A few examples of special relationship between animals and plants are given below. For the baya weaverbird (Ploceus philippinus), green strands of leaf blades at the nest is a sign of industriousness, and males who can weave efficient nests get many mates during one season. For the aboriginee women of Jeya, the bark of Cinnamomum kami is a defense against their brutal husband. When harassed, they threaten to eat kami and become sexually sterile, not capable of producing a male issue who is the pride and support for the father at his old age. The male deer-pig (Babirussa babirussa) always sharpens his tusk on the butress-roots of Canarium sp. Where such buttressed trees are felled or not available, the animal migrates to another region. The malleefowl (Leipoa ocellata) piles leaves and brambles over its large, 10-m wide nest. With rains, the organic materials liberate heat enough to hatch the eggs of the fowl that doesn't brood over the eggs. At the reclaimed land of the Sumatra swamps, where the natural ecosystem is disturbed by coconut plantations, rare crustacean and mammalian pests start ravanging the coconut. Small-holders grow pineapple, tapioca, banana and yams at the borders of gardens established in forest areas for these pests to get satiated with their produce and spare the coconut. Man endeavours to improve the dry and parched soil to raise a green coconut Canopy by difficult means. He even converts the marshy swamps by providing suitable drainage system into a land suitable for raising crop plants. Man is also capable of replacing an uneconomic crop in favour of an attractive one, thus going upto the extent of clearing mountains of Coconuts in favour of more paying crops bke the clove. The largest flower (Refflesia arnoldi) and the gigantic arum (Amorphophallus titanum) emit odour unbearable for human being in order to attract pollinating agents. Coconut trichomes serve as poison to insect pests like Setora nitens and Chalcoscelids sp. Particularly in South India, people are causing the rapid disappearance of the "karpaka vriksham", (Borassus flabellifer), the hope for people of dry regions. The Caconut crab (Birgus latro) is alleged to subsist mostly on coconut and hence its popular name. However, thus has recently been proved to be untrue since the crab can live without coconut. The painted stork carries green twigs to its nest having chicks. DO these twigs protect the chicks from diseases, pests or excessive heat? The common crow, Corvus splendens is an example for an animal that reduces its dependence on plants. It switches over to metal nests in place of the traditional nest made of twigs and brambles.

Mobility characteristics of rainfall-triggered shallow landslides in a forest area in Mengdong, China

Mobility characteristics of rainfall-triggered shallow landslides in a forest area in Mengdong, China