Forestry Administration Research Articles

Research on Monitoring Illegal Wildlife Trade Based on Data-Driven Models

This paper aims to evaluate client selection and project alignment in wildlife conservation projects using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and TOPSIS models. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA), and the National Forestry and Grassland Administration are selected as candidate clients. Quantitative analysis uses three indicators: resources, power, and interest. The results indicate that WWF is the most suitable client regarding comprehensive resources, power, and interest. Additionally, the paper analyzes the cost-benefit and organizational development contributions of WWF implementing the "Electronic ID" project, highlighting its potential to enhance WWF's international influence and reputation. The study demonstrates that leveraging technology to track and protect wildlife can curb illegal wildlife trade and promote biodiversity conservation.

Responses of sap flow in Larix principis-rupprechtii to environment under different weather conditions.

This study was conducted in Liupanshan Forest Ecological Positioning Station of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration. We monitored sap flow of Larix principis-rupprechtii plantation in the Xiangshui River sub-basin throughout the 2019 growing season (from May 17 to October 12), as well as the meteorological conditions and soil environment (soil temperature and soil water content), to analyze the comprehensive environmental responses of sap flow in L. principis-rupprechtii under different weather conditions. The results showed that sap flow rate increased and then decreased on the daily scale, with the highest rate on sunny days, followed by overcast days and then rainy days. Sap flow rate had a single peak on sunny days and multiple peaks on overcast and rainy days. Sunny days had earlier and longer sap flow compared to overcast and rainy days. Dominant factors driving sap flow differed across different weather. Vapor pressure deficit was the dominant factor influencing sap flow in sunny and overcast days, while solar radiation was dominant one in rainy days. The contribution rates of main factors to sap flow on sunny, overcast and rainy days were 31.1%, 27.4% and 40.1%, respectively. Results of the principal component analysis showed the factors affecting sap flow on sunny days could be classified into hydrothermal complex factors (air temperature, soil temperature, and volumetric soil moisture), water vapor transpiration factors (relative humidity and vapor pressure deficit), and radiation factor (solar radiation). The factors affecting sap flow on overcast and rainy days were combined into transpiration (relative humidity, solar radiation, and vapor pressure deficit), heat (air temperature and soil temperature), and soil water factor volumetric (volumetric soil moisture). On sunny days, sap flow reached the peak value 110, 80, 70 min after the hydrothermal, water vapor transpiration, and radiation factors, respectively. On overcast and rainy days, sap flow reached its peak in 10, 20, 30 min and 140, 60, 150 min, respectively before the peaks of transpiration, heat, and soil water factors.

Territorial Organisation of the Resort “Yaremche” in the Nadvirna District of the Ivano-Frankivsk Region

Topicality. The Ukrainian Carpathians (a part of the Eastern Carpathians in Ukraine) are among the best ones in the country in terms of recreational sphere development. Many years of experience in the field of recreation is an important prerequisite for its recognition as a priority in the economic complex of the region. The strategic goal of the development of any territory is to create a stable territorial-recreation system, optimally using natural, labour, material, technical, and other resources. This, in turn, will ensure the material well-being of the local population without disturbing the ecological balance in the Carpathian region. The aim of the article is to implement the territorial organisation of the resort “Yaremche” with the help of information technologies. Research methods. Both general scientific and special methods are used in this study. The basis of resort area zoning are information technologies and mapping methods, such as Autocad xb MapInfo, Digitals, Delta, Google Maps, and Virtual Earth, Google Earth Pro, and Open Streer Map. Digitisation of land covers are carried out according to their display on online satellite images in the Digitals program. Results. The territorial organisation of the resort “Yaremche” is carried out with the help of information technologies. The allocation of each of the 13 zones with a total area of 11,313.897 hectares is substantiated: Carpathian National Nature Park Reserve Zone – 509.2448 hectares; Rivers Zone – 64.8532 hectares; Zone of Coastal Protection – 304.4698 hectares; Zone of Regulated Recreation of Carpathian National Nature Park – 2028.1494 hectares; Recreational Zone – 101.9866 hectares; Zone of Public Green Spaces – 18.7594 hectares; Zone of Other Green Areas – 623.9729 hectares; Zone of skiing tracks – 81.1291 hectares; Zone of Service Centres of Mountain Recreation Complexes – 18.9858 hectares; Land Area of Settlements (buildings) – 1183.7419 hectares; Zone of Recreational Forests of Dora Forestry of Delyatyn FI – 1746.3541 hectares; The zone of exploitation forests, other forest and non-forest lands of Dora Forestry of Deliatyn FA (Forestry Administration) – 4074.65 hectares; Zone of Exploitation Forests, Other Forest and Non-forest lands of Yaremche Nature Protection Scientific Research Department of Carpathian National Nature Park – 557.6 hectares. Conclusions and discussion. The effectiveness of this research consists in optimising the use of the territory of the resort “Yaremche”. This will make it possible to improve its social efficiency, expand the medical facilities of the Ukrainian Carpathians, and improve the economic performance of the region.

Physicochemical properties and antioxidant activity of Yulingdang jujube (Ziziphus jujuba Mill.) fruit at different stages of maturity

ABSTRACT Ziziphus jujuba cv. Yulingdang (YLD) is a jujube cultivar that has been approved as a new plant cultivar by the State Forestry Administration of China. The physicochemical properties and antioxidant activity of YLD fruit were evaluated at seven stages of maturation, ranging from fruit setting to red ripe. The antioxidant activity of YLD fruit was assessed through total phenolics, total flavonoids, and methods including the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging rate, β-carotene-linoleic acid emulsification method, and reducing power. These measures were observed to decrease gradually as maturation progressed. The study also indicated an increase in total sugar and total acid levels, along with a decrease in moisture, soluble protein, and the sugar-acid ratio during maturation. Understanding this information is essential to fully exploit the commercial potential of YLD fruit.

Strictest nature conservation: China's national park policy underpinned by power shift and turf dynamic

China initiated the national park policy in 2015 to achieve the strictest nature conservation. This study pointed out that the core of this policy is to increase central authority. Hence, adopting the bureaucratic politics and Actor-centered Power theory, the study aimed to analyze the power shift and turf dynamics among ministries in the national park policy process. Based on the evidence, the study found that before 2015, ministries' overlapping turfs in managing protected areas weakened the central coercion of local nature conservation, resulting in excessive exploitation of these areas. To enhance conservation effectiveness, top leaders initiated the national park policy. Top leaders reclaimed ministerial turfs through coercive power, whereas, utilized the ownership of the national park policy to incentivize them to participate in pilots. Ultimately, the 2018 ministry reform led to the State Forestry and Grassland Administration acquiring turf over protected areas including national parks. At the same time, top leaders maintained the potential coercion through information provided by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment that retained supervision authority over national parks. This ministerial restructuring established robust national park administrations, breaking local power patterns and strengthening the central control on nature conservation, which ensures the strictest nature conservation. This study contributed to understanding Chinese national park policy based on the perspective of political science. Furthermore, it provided an analytical framework of power and turf for research on bureaucratic politics.

Land cover change effects from community forest management in Michoacán, Mexico

More than half of Mexico’s forests and about a third of the forests of the world are communally owned. Despite this, community forest management (CFM) is the least studied forest management policy, and existing studies have focused on the effects of CFM on deforestation. In this paper, we evaluate the effect of CFM on land cover more broadly, to understand how CFM affects a community’s land use decisions. Mexico’s forestry administration mandates that to legally sell timber, communities must adopt forest management plans designed by a certified forester. In this study, we use differential access to foresters to identify the effect of community management on land cover and deforestation. We find that over time communities that adopt management plans see relatively more primary forest, a limited expansion of the agricultural frontier, and a decrease in deforestation. The decrease in deforestation is economically significant since the economic benefits from the avoided CO2 emissions alone could far outweigh the costs of adopting the management plans.

Editorial: Welcome to Wildlife Letters

Editorial: Welcome to <i>Wildlife Letters</i>

Состояние защитных лесных насаждений Азовского побережья Краснодарского края

The littoral zones are unstable and easily destroyed ecological systems due to the natural origin. The coastal landscapes are usually attractive to human activities. Thus, the environment of such areas is particularly sensitive to anthropogenic impact and has low ability for recovery. The research was made on the Azov coast near the town of Temryuk in Krasnodar Krai. The choice of the trial areas in the forest belts for plantation of Oleaster or Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia) was preceded by the construction of the reconnoitering routes. The average areas with the characteristic natural state of the examined vegetation were selected. Oleaster was primary planted in the 1950s and 1960s. These tree assembles have artificial origin. The article considers the possibility of protecting by afforestation the coastal line of the Sea of Azov from destruction, abrasion, surge waves. That forest ranging can be made, as an example, by Russian olive. The goals of the research were to investigate the state of the protective forest plantings on the coast of the Sea of Azov, to determine the role of the plantings in the ecosystem, to evaluate the protective potential and to develop the measures for improvement the condition of the plants. The results of the research showed that the anthropogenic influence created the tinning by suppression of the trees from 9 to 33 %. The extinction of the flowerage and vegetative regeneration were also indicated. As a result of partially tinning of the wood species in the protective areas the wind flow was redistributed, and the illumination of the soil was increased. The forest belts have the protective purpose and are an important component of the resisting barrier for the shorelines of the Sea of Asov. In general, the tested forest territories have a suitable condition. Although, the depletion process was observed for single plant species as well as for the planted rows. Some of the sections were totally woodless. The forestry administration of the region should protect and preserve the forest areas. It is recommended to reduce the recreational load on the forest belts, to provide regularly agrotechnical care for the plants and to afforest the territories partially or totally depending on the quality conditions.

TreeSatAI Benchmark Archive: a multi-sensor, multi-label dataset for tree species classification in remote sensing

Abstract. Airborne and spaceborne platforms are the primary data sources for large-scale forest mapping, but visual interpretation for individual species determination is labor-intensive. Hence, various studies focusing on forests have investigated the benefits of multiple sensors for automated tree species classification. However, transferable deep learning approaches for large-scale applications are still lacking. This gap motivated us to create a novel dataset for tree species classification in central Europe based on multi-sensor data from aerial, Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery. In this paper, we introduce the TreeSatAI Benchmark Archive, which contains labels of 20 European tree species (i.e., 15 tree genera) derived from forest administration data of the federal state of Lower Saxony, Germany. We propose models and guidelines for the application of the latest machine learning techniques for the task of tree species classification with multi-label data. Finally, we provide various benchmark experiments showcasing the information which can be derived from the different sensors including artificial neural networks and tree-based machine learning methods. We found that residual neural networks (ResNet) perform sufficiently well with weighted precision scores up to 79 % only by using the RGB bands of aerial imagery. This result indicates that the spatial content present within the 0.2 m resolution data is very informative for tree species classification. With the incorporation of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery, performance improved marginally. However, the sole use of Sentinel-2 still allows for weighted precision scores of up to 74 % using either multi-layer perceptron (MLP) or Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) models. Since the dataset is derived from real-world reference data, it contains high class imbalances. We found that this dataset attribute negatively affects the models' performances for many of the underrepresented classes (i.e., scarce tree species). However, the class-wise precision of the best-performing late fusion model still reached values ranging from 54 % (Acer) to 88 % (Pinus). Based on our results, we conclude that deep learning techniques using aerial imagery could considerably support forestry administration in the provision of large-scale tree species maps at a very high resolution to plan for challenges driven by global environmental change. The original dataset used in this paper is shared via Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6598390, Schulz et al., 2022). For citation of the dataset, we refer to this article.

Strong winds drive grassland fires in China

Accounting for 41.7% of China’s total land area, grasslands are linked to the livelihoods of over 20 million people. Although grassland fires cause severe damage in China every year, their spatiotemporal patterns and climate drivers are not well understood. In this study, we used grassland fire record forms provided by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration and grassland fire location data from the Wildfire Atlas of China to examine the spatiotemporal patterns and and seasonality of fires in China for the period from 2008 to 2020. We found that most grassland fires occurred in Inner Mongolia in northern China, specifically in the Hulun Buir and Xilingol grasslands. We found distinct differences in fire seasonality in northern China, which has a major fire season in April, versus southwestern China, where the major fire season occurs in February, March and April. April grassland fires in northern China are the result of strong winds, typically from the west, and spring drought. A secondary fire season in northern China occurs in October and is also driven by strong winds. The fire season in southwestern China seems to be less shaped by climatic factors such as wind speed, precipitation, and drought. This study provides support for decision-making by fire prevention and fire management authorities in China.

Characterization of Land-Cover Changes and Forest-Cover Dynamics in Togo between 1985 and 2020 from Landsat Images Using Google Earth Engine

Carbon stocks in forest ecosystems, when released as a result of forest degradation, contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To quantify and assess the rates of these changes, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends that the REDD+ mechanism use a combination of Earth observational data and field inventories. To this end, our study characterized land-cover changes and forest-cover dynamics in Togo between 1985 and 2020, using the supervised classification of Landsat 5, 7, and 8 images on the Google Earth Engine platform with the Random Forest (RF) algorithm. Overall image classification accuracies for all target years ranged from 0.91 to 0.98, with Kappa coefficients ranging between 0.86 and 0.96. Analysis indicated that all land cover classes, which were identified at the beginning of the study period, have undergone changes at several levels, with a reduction in forest area from 49.9% of the national territory in 1985, to 23.8% in 2020. These losses of forest cover have mainly been to agriculture, savannahs, and urbanization. The annual change in forest cover was estimated at −2.11% per year, with annual deforestation at 422.15 km2 per year, which corresponds to a contraction in forest cover of 0.74% per year over the 35-year period being considered. Ecological Zone IV (mountainous, with dense semi-deciduous forests) is the one region (of five) that has best conserved its forest area over this period. This study contributes to the mission of forestry and territorial administration in Togo by providing methods and historical data regarding land cover that would help to control the factors involved in forest area reductions, reinforcing the system of measurement, notification, and verification within the REDD+ framework, and ensuring better, long-lasting management of forest ecosystems.

Bamboo and rattan: Nature-based solutions for sustainable development

Bamboo and rattan: Nature-based solutions for sustainable development

China Carbon Neutralization Research Status and Research Frontier Tracking

In the context of global joint response to climate change, carbon neutralization has become one of the main measures for governments, enterprises, and even individuals around the world to deal with global warming. This article explores the current research status and frontier trends in the field of carbon neutralization, which can not only provide theoretical reference for the follow-up research of carbon neutralization but also provide useful ideas for the policy-making of carbon neutralization. The study is built on the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) Core Journals Database, the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index database, and the Chinese Science Citation Database as the literature retrieval database platform. Using CiteSpace optical measurement software, 370 pieces of literature in the field of carbon neutrality research in China were systematically analyzed to track the situation and impact of research by various research institutions and prominent authors in China in this field and to analyze the research hotspots in this field, which is of great significance for the follow-up research of carbon neutrality. The research results show that 1) the number of publications in China’s carbon-neutral field has increased significantly with the change of years and has strong development potential. 2) Journals with many articles are more concentrated and are generally published in three journals: Natural Gas Industry, Proceedings of the CSEE, and Chinese Science Bulletin. 3) In terms of the major research institutions, the Institute of National Conditions of Tsinghua University, the School of Public Administration of Tsinghua University, the School of Grammar of Beijing University of Technology, and the Economic Development Research Center of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration have published more articles and muscular scientific research strength in the field of carbon neutrality. 4) In terms of the principal authors, four typical research teams have been set up: low-carbon economy, low-carbon cycle, carbon trading, sewage carbon neutrality, environmental science, and resource utilization, and the authors of each research team cooperate closely. 5) In the future, the research hotspots in China’s carbon-neutral field are still the themes of carbon emission reduction, green and low carbon, new energy, etc., and the research hotspots have begun to shift to the concept of development, from the very beginning of environmental protection and carbon emission reduction to the current new energy development. Carbon neutrality is currently a hot research field in China, and in the future, special attention should be paid to the full use of machine learning and extensive data mining to solve complex social, economic, and ecological problems. It is suggested that China should introduce the concepts of “common but differentiated responsibilities” and “consumer responsibility” in the international climate change negotiations in the formulation of carbon neutralization policies, so as to fully protect the right to the development of China’s underdeveloped regions and avoid the injustice caused by the blind formulation of carbon neutralization policies.Systematic Review Registration: [https://review.frontiersin.org/review/896524/16/1295417/#tab/History]

How to Improve Forest Carbon Sequestration Output Performance: An Evidence from State-Owned Forest Farms in China

China’s state-owned forest farms are the basic sectors of forestry production, and their carbon cycle functions, such as timber processing and forest carbon sequestration, are of great significance to the national emission reduction strategy. By three-stage DEA and Tobit models, this paper measures the carbon sequestration output efficiency of 3706 state-owned forest farms involved in China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration’s 2008–2018 survey. We figure out how the mechanism on the carbon sequestration impacts output efficiency of these forest farms and analyze the temporal trends and spatial distributions of their outputs in various regions. Our results indicate that the overall output efficiency of state-owned forest farms in China is relatively low compared with the international advanced level and show that distinctive north-south regional differences exist. Specifically, the carbon storage of the state-owned forest farms in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia occupies more than half of the carbon storage of total amounts, but their output efficiency is unsatisfactory. Conversely, the forest farms in Southwest China have a medium amount of carbon storage and the highest output efficiency. After improving the external environments of these farms, the efficiency value in each province appears as a significant increment. Moreover, the effects of afforestation, timber harvests, the under-forest economy, and other operating behaviors exhibit regional heterogeneity to some extent. Therefore, this paper advocates reforming the current forest cultivation strategy that emphasizes afforestation and neglects management, and relevant government departments are supposed to adjust operations according to local conditions to promote sustainable forest management.

Recognition of Forest Carbon Rights in Indonesia: A Constitutional Approach

As a forest-rich nation, Indonesia has actively participated in carbon market governance like the REDD+ program. With the rapid expansion of REDD+ to address the effects of climate change, questions surrounding carbon rights have surfaced. This study aims to analyze the regulatory development of carbon rights in Indonesia and its impact on the community rights over forest resources by elaborating on the ideal carbon rights governance under a constitutional perspective. The study uses the normative method, which includes pertinent rules and supporting statements from climate change specialists. This study shows that carbon rights are defined broadly as the right to participate in forest carbon trading, although they require a government permit. There is no clear explanation of the relationship between land tenure and carbon ownership under the existing legislation, despite four permits to acquire carbon benefits: environmental service, social forestry, ecosystem restoration, and forest carbon administration permit. While the state can claim state control rights on certain commodities like carbon under Article 33 of the Indonesian Constitution, it also has to manage the distribution of carbon incentives based on the public interest. By facilitating the transfer of carbon rights under a carbon trading scheme while highlighting the government's role in sharing the benefits of carbon via a result-based payment scheme, Presidential Regulation 98/2021 contributes to more explicit control of carbon rights. All concerns related to carbon rights governance in Indonesia include complicated administrative and technical requirements for applying for a license, insecure land tenure due to overlapping claims, and unlawful encroachment in forest regions. Since land tenure issues remain unresolved, recognizing carbon rights as an alternative to recognizing marginal and community rights to forest resources could be viable.&#x0D; KEYWORDS: Environmental Regulation, Forest Carbon Rights, REDD+.

Ecological uniqueness of species assemblages and their determinants in forest communities

Diversity and DistributionsVolume 28, Issue 4 p. 877-877 CORRIGENDUMOpen Access Ecological uniqueness of species assemblages and their determinants in forest communities This article corrects the following: Ecological uniqueness of species assemblages and their determinants in forest communities Jie Yao, Jihong Huang, Yi Ding, Yue Xu, Han Xu, Runguo Zang, Andrew Barnes, Volume 27Issue 3Diversity and Distributions pages: 454-462 First Published online: December 10, 2020 First published: 04 March 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13481AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat In the paper by Yao et al. (2021), errors were introduced to the first institutional affiliation. The new correct institutional affiliation is as follows: 1Institute of Forest Ecology, Environment and Nature Conservation, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Environment of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Beijing, China The corrected affiliation detail in the correspondence section is as follows: Correspondence Runguo Zang Institute of Forest Ecology, Environment and Nature Conservation, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Environment of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Beijing 100091, China. Email: zangrung@caf.ac.cn Reference Yao, J., Huang, J., Ding, Y., Xu, Y., Xu, H., & Zang, R. (2021). Ecological uniqueness of species assemblages and their determinants in forest communities. Diversity and Distributions, 27, 454– 462. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13205Wiley Online LibraryWeb of Science®Google Scholar Volume28, Issue4April 2022Pages 877-877 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Public awareness and willingness to pay (WTP) for forest conservation in Malaysia

Protecting forests and their wildlife from threats such as encroachment, illegal logging and poaching is vital to safeguard their existence for future generations, and is crucial for the balance of our ecosystem. The Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) currently has a man-made forest under its protection where the forest area is managed sustainably and systematically to ensure the ecosystem in Kuala Lumpur remains in balance. In order to assess forest conservation and its impacts on the urban community, this study focuses on the level of public awareness for forest conservation and willingness to pay (WTP) to maintain the area. The importance and value of a forest are determined using the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). The mean WTP is affected by household income and education level. This research provides a guideline for stakeholders in forest areas and evaluates public awareness via their WTP for forest conservation. Moreover, knowledge of forest conservation by communities helps governments in resolving common problems relating to forestry policy, administration, and management.

First Report of Southern Blight Caused by Sclerotium delphinii on Euonymus fortunei in China.

Euonymus fortunei is an evergreen shrub-vine in the family Celastraceae, widely used as a groundcover or a vine to climb walls, or traditional herbal medicine in China. In August 2019, typical southern blight symptoms that included basal stem rot and the presence of sclerotia in rotted tissue were observed on E. fortunei in Kunshan city, Jiangsu province, China. Disease incidence was estimated at approximately 15 to 20%; meanwhile, approximately 30 to 40% of diseased plants died. The infected plants showed brown to dark stem necrosis near the base, leaf yellowing and wilting. White mycelia and white to dark reddish-brown sclerotia were observed at the base of the stem and rotten tissue. To isolate the causal organism, infected stem tissue and sclerotia collected from diseased plants in a median strip in Kunshan (31°23'40"N, 120°54'57"E) were disinfected with 70% ethanol for 2 to 3 sec, followed by 2 min in 5% NaClO, rinsed three times with sterile water, then plated on potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium, and incubated at 25°C. Isolated colonies were subcultured by needle tip transfer 3 days later. Isolates had white mycelia on PDA, with a radial growth rate of 15.2 to 18.7 mm/day. White and orange sclerotia were developed after 5 to 8 days and eventually turned dark reddish-brown. The sclerotia were globoid or irregular with surface markings (1.4 to 4.3 mm diam.; mean = 2.59 mm; n = 50) on PDA, and the average number of sclerotia produced per Petri dish ranged from 35 to 85 (mean = 52; n = 10). Microscopic observations found septal hyphae and clamp connections. These morphological features were identical to the description of Sclerotium delphinii (syn. Sclerotium rolfsii var. delphinii) (Mukherjee et al. 2015; Punja and Damiani 1996; Stevens 1931). A representative isolate YKY2020.01 was stored in the Key laboratory of National Forestry and Grassland Administration on Ecological Landscaping of challenging Urban Sites in Shanghai. For molecular identification, DNA of the isolate YKY2020.01 was extracted using the Fungal DNA Kit (OMEGA bio-tek, China). The internal transcribed spacer region (ITS fragment including ITS1, 5.8S rDNA, and ITS2 region) was amplified with primers ITS1/ITS4 (White et al. 1990), and then sequenced by Sangon Biotech (Shanghai, China). BLAST analysis in NCBI found the ITS sequence of YKY2020.01 (MW916955) was 99.84% similar to S. delphinii strain CBS272.30 (MH855140). Phylogenetic analysis using maximum likelihood (ML) method placed isolate YKY2020.01 in the same clade as S. delphinii. To evaluate pathogenicity, hyphal blocks (0.7 cm diam.) were placed at the base of the stem of healthy E. fortunei (n = 5 plants). Five healthy plants were inoculated by uncolonized agar blocks as controls. All plants were kept in a greenhouse with a temperature range from 21 to 25.6°C (mean = 24.9°C) and relative humidity of 50%. Inoculated plants were symptomatic after 3 days and wilted after 12 days. Symptoms in inoculated plants were similar to those observed under natural conditions, whereas the control group remained asymptomatic. The fungal pathogen was reisolated from symptomatic tissue and confirmed as S. delphinii. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of S. delphinii causing southern blight on E. fortunei in China and worldwide. This finding provides concise and practical information on the newly emerged disease of E. fortunei, which is beneficial for future disease management.

The return of the elephants: How two groups of dispersing elephants attracted the attention of billions and what can we learn from their behavior

The return of the elephants: How two groups of dispersing elephants attracted the attention of billions and what can we learn from their behavior

A Study on How the Five Senses Are Affected When Tourists Experience Towns with Forest Characteristics: An Empirical Analysis Based on the Data of Fujian, Guangdong and Sichuan in China

Senses are the primary channel by which travelers enjoy tourism, and the sensory experience of tourists is very important to the quality of their tourism experience. In this study, 385 questionnaires were distributed to tourists visiting the first batch of characteristic towns classified by the China National Forestry and Grassland Administration as national towns with forest characteristics. SPSS software was used for regression analysis to test the differences in the impact of sensory experience on the experience quality and future loyalty of forest town tourists. The results show that: (1) vision makes the highest contribution to the quality of tourist experience; (2) olfactory experience makes the lowest contribution to the quality of tourist experience and has no significant impact on it; (3) auditory experience has a significant impact on the quality of tourism experience but has no significant impact on the loyalty index. The study further confirms that, when a single sensory experience of tourists is insufficient, satisfaction can be achieved through the other senses. It is of great significance for forest town managers to design a sensory landscape according to the combined components of a destination’s characteristics and the tourists’ physical identities.