Reforestation Research Articles

Conservation of forest cover in Mesoamerican biosphere reserves is associated with the increase of local non-farm occupation

Protected areas can prevent forest loss, but their effects on forest fragmentation and forest regrowth are poorly understood. Furthermore, the importance of protected areas in shaping these forest spatial changes may depend on different socioeconomic drivers (e.g. population size, distance to cities, proportion of local people working in non-farm occupation), but the empirical evidence on such dependence is very scarce. Here, we used contra factual technics to assess whether biosphere reserves (n = 19) in the Mesoamerican biodiversity hotspot can reduce forest loss and fragmentation and promote forest regrowth during the period 2000–2020. We used satellite imagery and governmental data to assess the socioeconomic factors driving these changes. Particularly, using multimodel inference analysis, we tested whether higher non-farm occupation, combined with low demographic pressures, reduces forest loss and fragmentation and promotes forest regrowth. We found that reserves reduce forest loss and preserve less-fragmented configurations, however, they neither reduce fragmentation rate nor promote forest regrowth. Forest loss rate inside the reserves decreased as non-farm occupation enhanced and the density of rural settlements decreased. Therefore, promoting higher opportunities in non-farm economic activities and planning rural settlements distribution around reserves could help to increase the effectiveness of reserves for forest conservation.

Is National Park Affinity Related to Visitors’ Satisfaction with Park Service and Recreation Quality? A Case Study from a Thai Forest National Park

The provision of high-quality national park tourism services depends on an understanding of the role of the national park brand in visitors’ decision-making on visiting parks. The consideration of forest recreation and park brand awareness not only helps to increase the quality of visitors’ experiences but also assists in the management of natural park resources. This study explored whether national park affinity can explain differences in visitor satisfaction with the national park trip, tourism services and facilities, visitor loyalty, and perceptions of recreation quality as well as visitor expenditures. This study classified 400 on-site visitors to the Khao Yai National Park into three national park affinity segments. The results indicated that about two-fifths of respondents had a low national park affinity with less satisfaction with the national park tourism facilities and services and visitor management. This segment reported lower visitor loyalty and that visitors felt more crowded, while no differences in expenditures for the trip were found between the affinity segments.

Critical Ecological Roles, Structural Attributes and Conservation of Old Growth Forest: Lessons From a Case Study of Australian Mountain Ash Forests

Old growth is a critical growth stage in many forest types globally. It has many key ecological roles including biodiversity conservation, carbon storage and the provision of services such as water production. The extent of old growth forest has been declining in many ecosystems around the world, with major ecological and ecosystem service consequences. Important insights about such declines, as well as the structure, function and conservation of old growth forest, can be gained from detailed cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of different age cohorts within a given forest ecosystem. In this review article, we outline key insights into the characteristics of, and threats to old growth forests, using the Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria, south-eastern Australia as a detailed case study. These forests are dominated by the tallest flowering plants on earth and have been subject to several decades of intense study. These studies show that old growth Mountain Ash forests are characterized by (among other features): giant trees (approaching 100 m tall and sometimes exceeding 20 m in circumference), numerous trees with hollows, an understorey ofAcaciaand rainforest trees, a range of plant and animal species that are rare or absent in younger aged stands, and moist, nutrient-rich soils. The area of old growth Mountain Ash forest has declined to 1.16% of the ∼141,000 ha area occupied by ash-type forests in the Central Highlands region. This is up to 60 times less than it was at the time of European colonization ∼220 years ago. The loss of old growth has major implications for bird, mammal and other biodiversity, as well as for carbon storage and water production for human consumption. The main drivers of old growth decline are recurrent wildfire, widespread clearcutting, and a logging-fire interaction in which cut and then regenerated forests become more flammable and are at significantly elevated risk of burning at high (stand replacing) severity. Climate change is also a driver of old growth decline both through elevating the mortality of large old living trees and underpinning an increase in the frequency of high severity wildfire. These interacting drivers mean that restoring old growth Mountain Ash forest will be an ecological and policy challenge. We argue that a first step must be to cease all commercial logging in the Mountain Ash ecosystem to allow new cohorts of old growth forest to be recruited and thereby expand the extent of the old growth estate. In addition, the Government of Victoria should revert to a past definition of old growth that made it easier for forest to qualify for protection. Given there are high risks of recurrent high-severity wildfire in the existing Mountain Ash forest estate which is dominated by highly flammable young regrowth forest, new technologies (such as the use of drones and satellites) are needed to rapidly detect and then suppress ignitions before fires become large and difficult to control. Mountain Ash forests have provided an important natural laboratory for understanding the dynamics, management and conservation of old growth forest. They have also helped generate some valuable general perspectives likely to be relevant to other forest ecosystems globally. These include: (1) the critical value of multi-facetted cross-sectional and longitudinal studies in quantifying attributes of, and threats to, old growth forest, (2) the need for a carefully crafted definition of old growth that will typically be ecosystem-specific and based on the time required to develop key ecosystem attributes (e.g., large old trees), (3) the importance of rigorous protection measures because poor decisions that result in the loss of old growth now will take prolonged periods to rectify, and (4) setting protection levels that are relative to the existing spatial coverage of remaining old growth and the extent and impacts of stressors driving old growth decline.

Governing abandoned land: Storylines on natural forest regrowth in France and Spain

Natural forest regrowth on abandoned land represents a major land use change in some regions of Europe. This is driven by various factors related to land abandonment, particularly changing socioeconomic conditions for agriculture and rural depopulation. Little research exists about how the issue is addressed at the policy level. This paper looks into the policymaking related to natural forest regrowth in France and Spain, two countries where land abandonment and natural forest regrowth occur at significant scales. We conduct a policy discourse analysis building upon 27 interviews carried out between 2018 and 2020 with policy actors from various fields that connect with these topics. We find four competing storylines in both countries: extensive agriculture, forestry, landscape conservation, and wilderness. These storylines differ regarding the framing of natural forest regrowth as a problem or an opportunity, and the preferred policy solutions. While storylines rooted in extensive agriculture, landscape conservation and forestry tend to problematize the phenomenon, a wilderness storyline voices an opportunity perspective. In France, a few actors voice elements of an insignificance storyline. Given its spatial importance, natural forest regrowth will likely become more important for future policymaking in the EU. Engaging in further research across disciplines and policy fields is necessary to study the phenomenon and its possible management and governance options.

Does wood bioenergy help or harm the climate?

ABSTRACT The EU, UK, US, and other nations consider wood to be a carbon neutral fuel, ignoring the carbon dioxide emitted from wood combustion in their greenhouse gas accounting. Many countries subsidize wood energy – often by burning wood pellets in place of coal for electric power – to meet their renewable energy targets. But can wood bioenergy help cut greenhouse emissions in time to limit the worst damage from climate change? The argument in favor seems obvious: wood, a renewable resource, must be better than burning fossil fuels. But wood emits more carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour than coal – and far more than other fossil fuels. Therefore, the first impact of wood bioenergy is to increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, worsening climate change. Forest regrowth might eventually remove that extra carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but regrowth is uncertain and takes time – decades to a century or more, depending on forest composition and climatic zone – time we do not have to cut emissions enough to avoid the worst harms from climate change. More effective ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions are already available and affordable now, allowing forests to continue to serve as carbon sinks and moderate climate change.

Net carbon accounting and reporting are a barrier to understanding the mitigation value of forest protection in developed countries

Meeting the Paris Agreement global warming target requires deep and rapid cuts in CO2 emissions as well as removals from the atmosphere into land sinks, especially forests. While international climate policy in the land sector does now recognize forest protection as a mitigation strategy, it is not receiving sufficient attention in developed countries even though they experience emissions from deforestation as well as from logging of managed forests. Current national greenhouse gas inventories obscure the mitigation potential of forest protection through net carbon accounting between the fossil fuel and the land sectors as well as within the different categories of the land. This prevents decision-makers in national governments, the private sector and civil society having access to all the science-based evidence needed to evaluate the merits of all mitigation strategies. The consequences of net carbon accounting for global policy were investigated by examining annual inventory reports of four high forest cover developed countries (Australia, Canada, USA, and Russia). Net accounting between sectors makes a major contribution to meeting nationally determined contributions with removals in Forest Land offsetting between 14% and 38% of the fossil fuel emissions for these countries. Analysis of reports for Australia at a sub-national level revealed that the State of Tasmania delivered negative emissions due to a change in forest management—a large and rapid drop in native forest logging—resulting in a mitigation benefit of ∼22 Mt CO2-e yr–1 over the reported period 2011/12–2018/19. This is the kind of outcome required globally to meet the Paris Agreement temperature goal. All CO2 emissions from, and atmospheric removals into, forest ecosystem carbon stocks now matter and should be counted and credited to achieve the deep and rapid cuts in emissions needed over the coming decades. Accounting and reporting systems therefore need to show gains and losses of carbon stocks in each reservoir. Changing forest management in naturally regenerating forests to avoid emissions from harvesting and enabling forest regrowth is an effective mitigation strategy that can rapidly reduce anthropogenic emissions from the forest sector and simultaneously increase removals of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Mexican agricultural frontier communities differ in forest dynamics with consequences for conservation and restoration

AbstractForest regrowth is key to achieve restoration commitments, but a general lack of understanding when it occurs and how long secondary forests persist hampers effective upscaling. We quantified spatiotemporal forest dynamics in a recently colonized agricultural frontier in southern Mexico, and tested how temporal variation in climate, and cross‐community variation in land ownership, land quality and accessibility affect forest disturbance, regrowth and secondary forest persistence. We consistently found more forest loss than regrowth, resulting in a net decrease of 45% forest cover (1991–2016) in the study region. Secondary forest cover remained relatively constant while secondary forest persistence increased, suggesting that farmers are moving away from shifting cultivation. Temporal variation in disturbance was explained by annual variation in climatic variables and key policy and market interventions. We found large differences in forest characteristics across communities, and these were explained by differences in land ownership and soil quality. Forests were better conserved on communal land, while secondary forest was more persistent when farms were larger and soil quality is better. At the pixel‐level both old forest and secondary forests were better represented on low‐quality lands indicating agricultural concentration on productive land. Both old forest and secondary forest were less common close to the main road, where secondary forests were also less persistent. We demonstrate the suitability of timeseries analyses to quantify forest disturbance and regrowth and we analyse drivers across time and space. Communities differ in forest dynamics, indicating different possibilities, needs and interests. We warrant that stimulating private land ownership may cause remaining forest patches to be lost and that conservation initiatives should benefit the whole community. Forest regrowth competes with agricultural production and ensuring farmers have access to restoration benefits is key to restoration success.

Assessing Amazon rainforest regrowth with GEDI and ICESat-2 data

Two novel satellite LiDAR missions —GEDI and ICESat-2— are currently operational and combined provide near-global measurements of forest height and structure. Such data underpin a new era of large-area approaches for measuring forest height in regrowing forests of different ages and assessing associated regrowth rates. Two LiDAR missions further allow for comparing independently derived forest heights and regrowth rates. This study utilized both GEDI and ICESat-2 measurements to assess regrowth rates in regrowing forests of different ages for the Brazilian state Rondônia. We considered 19 data subgroups stratified by beam strength, light condition, beam sensitivity, and waveform processing algorithm to assess the retrieval uncertainty and identify data subgroups associated with the most reliable regrowth estimates. The quality assessment of GEDI and ICESat-2 forest heights over four 50 km long airborne LiDAR strips determined a root mean square error of 4.14 m (CV = 17%) and 5.91 m (CV = 19%) and a mean error of 0.04 m and −2.81 m, respectively. A linear calibration model between satellite- and airborne-LiDAR heights was then derived for each data subgroup and used to calibrate satellite heights. Forest regrowth rates were subsequently estimated for each satellite mission using a space-for-time imputation with forest heights’ medians per stand age class. The total growth of GEDI and ICESat-2 median forest heights after 33 years was 20.17 m (SE = 1.3 m) and 20.13 m (SE = 2.8 m), respectively. However, when growth was approximated with different non-linear models, the total growth differed by up to 6%, and the average regrowth rate even by up to 23%. The study revealed that omitting either the calibration step or the removal of secondary-forest-border pixels would result in an underestimation of the regrowth rate by more than 20%. Furthermore, the ICESat-2 weak beams were found unreliable for regrowth retrieval. The study showed that the novel satellite LiDAR data and the proposed methods could assess median forest height growth over large areas. However, forest age errors should also be accounted for in the retrieval uncertainty before comparing the growth estimates across different regions.Code and data necessary to reproduce the results are freely available on GitHub and Zenodo.

Predicting landscape-scale biodiversity recovery by natural tropical forest regrowth.

Natural forest regrowth is a cost-effective, nature-based solution for biodiversity recovery, yet different socioenvironmental factors can lead to variable outcomes. A critical knowledge gap in forest restoration planning is how to predict where natural forest regrowth is likely to lead to high levels of biodiversity recovery, which is an indicator of conservation value and the potential provisioning of diverse ecosystem services. We sought to predict and map landscape-scale recovery of species richness and total abundance of vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants in tropical and subtropical second-growth forests to inform spatial restoration planning. First, we conducted a global meta-analysis to quantify the extent to which recovery of species richness and total abundance in second-growth forests deviated from biodiversity values in reference old-growth forests in the same landscape. Second, we employed a machine-learning algorithm and a comprehensive set of socioenvironmental factors to spatially predict landscape-scale deviation and map it. Models explained on average 34% of observed variance in recovery (range 9-51%). Landscape-scale biodiversity recovery in second-growth forests was spatially predicted based on socioenvironmental landscape factors (human demography, land use and cover, anthropogenic and natural disturbance, ecosystem productivity, and topography and soil chemistry); was significantly higher for species richness than for total abundance for vertebrates (median range-adjusted predicted deviation 0.09 vs. 0.34) and invertebrates (0.2 vs. 0.35) but not for plants (which showed a similar recovery for both metrics [0.24 vs. 0.25]); and was positively correlated for total abundance of plant and vertebrate species (Pearson r = 0.45, p = 0.001). Our approach can help identify tropical and subtropical forest landscapes with high potential for biodiversity recovery through natural forest regrowth.

Economic Value of Recreation as an Ecosystem Service in Ayer Keroh Recreational Forest, Malaysia

Economic values of various ecosystem services of recreational forests are not well understood in many countries, including Malaysia. Policymakers and resource managers with a lack of such information may make inappropriate decisions to manage forest resources. To address the information problem, this study used data and estimated the economic value of recreation as a cultural ecosystem service of the Ayer Keroh Recreational Forest (AKRF) in Malaysia using the Travel Cost Method (TCM). The study estimated an economic value of USD 20,346/ha/year for cultural services, including recreation. These findings provide some useful information that might be needed for those involved in planning and management for the development of urban forest sites, especially in AKRF.

Mixed forest specific calibration of the 3-PGmix model parameters from site observations to predict post-fire forest regrowth

Fire disturbance has been one of the main reasons for the alteration of forest succession trajectory and forest composition in the Daxing’anling Mountain of Inner Mongolia. Therefore, predicting the dynamic process of post-fire regrowth is critical for understanding the specific forest succession trajectory of this region. The 3-PGmix model (i.e., Physiological Principles in Predicting Growth for mixed stands) has been reported as a powerful tool for predicting the growth of mixed forest species. However, simulating post-fire regrowth of mixed forest with 3-PGmix remains challenging due to the uncertainty of species-specific as well as site-specific model parameters. Based on the field measurements from a wide range of environmental conditions, the 3-PGmix model was calibrated by conducting the sensitivity analysis and optimization of species-specific parameters for mixed forest stands of larch (Larix gmelinii) and birch (Betula platyphylla) with the PEST model (Model-Independent Parameter Estimation), and by using our newly developed methods to accurately estimating site-specific parameters (e.g., fertility rating, stand density, climate factors). The calibrated 3-PGmix model was tested against the independent sites and predicted the characteristic of post-fire forest regrowth. The sensitivity analysis shows that the parameters describing the forest canopy are more sensitive to the objective function of the PEST model. The calibrated 3-PGmix model performed well on independent sites, resulting in agreement with the field-measured diameter at breast height (DBH), the biomass of components, and stand density with a bias of less than 15% on most sites. The 3-PGmix model prediction of post-fire forest recovery characteristics found that the highest recovery rate of 5.5% per year was predicted from the moderate burn severity scenarios. A higher fertility rating was predicted to accelerate the process of post-fire forest successional and shorten the duration time when the species proportion achieves balance. The mixed-forest specific calibration of the 3-PGmix model in this study enables the explicit prediction of post-fire forest succession, and more simulations over different spatial scales with a wide range of environmental conditions by coupling with remote sensing observations can be expected.

Does Classification-Based Forest Management Promote Forest Restoration? Evidence from China’s Ecological Welfare Forestland Certification Program

Classification-based forest management (CFM) is generally regarded as an important political means of achieving sustainable forest development. However, in the upsurge of publicly managed forest devolution, the impact of CFM policies on forestland restoration remains uncertain and needs to be explored. This study contributes to the scant literature on this topic in China, where CFM has long been implemented based on the ecological welfare forestland (EWF) certification program. We use provincial data from China to examine the relationship between EWF-certified areas and forest restoration. Based on inter-provincial panel data from the third to the ninth consecutive forest resource inventories in China (1984–2018), we use a dynamic spatial autoregressive model to analyze the impact of forest classification management on forest restoration. The results show that, contrary to appearances, increasing EWF-certified areas promotes forest restoration. However, after controlling for other possible influencing factors, increasing EWF-certified areas plays a minimal role in promoting forest restoration and regrowth by inhibiting investment in forest management and even has a negative impact on forest restoration in the southern collective forest area.

Urban bio-social infrastructure as a patronized goods: institutional environment and structural changes

Introduction. Managing the development of the bio-social infrastructure of the city allows you to preserve natural objects in cities and create conditions for a healthy life in the conditions of high dynamics of urbanization in Russia. The aim of the study is to study and analyze the institutional environment for the development of urban forests as part of the natural frame of the city and changes in the structure using the example of the Igumnov forest (Kazan, Russia) Research objectives: recommendations for managing the development and structural changes of urban recreational forests as ward public goods of the city’s bio-social infrastructure and analysis of the institutional environment for the development of recreational urban forests in the city of Kazan.
 
 Materials and methods. The study was carried out on the basis of historical data from open sources of the mayor’s office of the city of Kazan on the planning and implementation of investment projects for the management of urban forests, parks and other natural objects. The methods of structural analysis, functional analysis, the method of full-scale photographic fixation of forests and green spaces of Kazan were used.
 
 Results. Qualitative changes in the structural and functional nature of the Igumnovskaya oak forest have been identified, which occurred at the stage of uncontrolled exploitation of a natural object in the absence of professional monitoring and care of the object, foreseeable development goals of the object. Development governance of natural objects as patronized goods is possible on the basis of institutions of public guardianship and city development.
 
 Conclusions. Development institutions can study, diagnose the state of the city, taking into account the multifactorial nature of the socio-bio-technical system of the city, create an institutional environment for the development of public, natural and technical objects of the city, including the forest services market, organize scientific research, carry out professional monitoring and management of the development of the biosphere infrastructure of cities, to carry out joint active work with citizens on the development of urban natural objects.

Use of the Earth Remote Sensing Data to assess the state of recreational forests in the Kokshetau National Park

Currently, modern satellite systems are increasingly used in various areas of studying natural resources and the dynamics of natural phenomena, and in carrying out an ecological assessment of the state of the environment. At the same time, remote sensing data provide greater visibility, data acquisition in dynamics, high speed of image acquisition, and transmission. The article presents the results of spatio-temporal changes in the vegetation biomass of the Kokshetau National Park based on the calculation and analysis of the vegetation index. Based on the analysis of the NDVI values, the tendencies of changes in phytomass were estimated and correlations with the main climatic characteristics of the territory for the studied period were revealed. For the research, we used Landsat satellite images and geoinformation mapping in the ArcGIS software package. In general, there is a negative trend in the values of the indices for the forests of all functional zones over a 10-year period. For the preservation and further renewal of forests, the National Park of Kokshetau needs to carry out a number of regulatory measures.

Determination of Tebing Keraton Recreation Demand Functions With Travel Cost Method

Forest recreation services as additional products that are intangible. It can not be quantified because it does not have a price on the normal market system. It underlies a study to determine the economic value of recreation, with case studies Tebing Keraton using the Individual Travel Cost Method. Analysis of data obtained from questionnaires using data processing equipment SPSS version 21 with multiple linear regression method to get the Tebing Keraton recreation demand functions. The variables that influence the number of visits are travel cost, total income, age, mileage, and gender. Coefficient values of variables determine the trend in increasing or decreasing the number of tourist visits. In this study, the demand functions divided into two recreational functions for students/scholar and for working people considering total income per month category. Based on the regression results, demand functions for students/scholar, is Y=-2.179–0.0000347X1+0.286X2+0.159X3-0.0000794X4-0.267X5, and for working people is Y=1.994–0.00000164X1+0.53X2-0.32X3-0.003X4-0.334X5. The regression result obtained a coefficient of determination (R2) that the percentage of the diversity of demand number of visits to Tebing Keraton which can be explained by the independent variables in the model. R2 value of model for students/scholar is 67.1%, which is more than 0.5, showing the moderate accuracy. While for working people, the value of R2 is 48.9%, which is in the range of 0.31 – 0.5, indicate the weak accuracy.

Expert assessment of landscape-level conservation strategies in boreal forests for biodiversity, recreation and water quality

Determining effects of landscape-level conservation strategies is needed, yet a challenging and costly endeavour. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of landscape-level conservation strategies in forests on biodiversity and provision of two ecosystem services (recreation and water quality). Specifically, we focused on the spatial allocation of unmanaged areas in production forests and different levels of “land sharing” or “land sparing”. They were represented through seven scenarios constructed for a boreal managed forest landscape in central Sweden. All scenarios had the same total level of conservation effort, but they differed in the combinations of sizes of unmanaged areas and how these areas were spread in the landscape. In one scenario, this was complemented with extended rotation of production areas. Experts (researchers in relevant fields) assessed these scenarios for overall biodiversity, recreation, and water quality. We used the Delphi technique: experts filled out an online survey individually in two rounds. In the second round they were familiarized with anonymized responses of others from the previous round. There was little agreement between experts whether concentration of unmanaged areas in one part of the landscape or dispersion of them around the entire area is more beneficial, for biodiversity as well as for the two ecosystem services. The explanation of the opinions given by biodiversity experts were based on different ecological theories resulting in different conclusions (mainly habitat complementation vs. metapopulation ecology). A few large unmanaged areas were considered more beneficial for biodiversity than many small areas. The main argument was that long-term species persistence becomes higher with larger areas. For recreation and water quality, there were almost no differences in estimates between these two strategies. One “land sharing” approach, retention trees, received the lowest score. The second “land sharing” approach, extended rotation, was scored higher, especially regarding recreation. This may be because extended rotations generate features of high recreational value, such as mature, thinned forests with not so much dead wood. Conclusively, we suggest a strategy of mixed conservation measures, with considerable efforts directed towards establishing and maintaining large unmanaged areas.

Towards accurate mapping of forest in tropical landscapes: A comparison of datasets on how forest transition matters

Tropical forests represent half of the Earth's remaining forest area, but they are shrinking at high rates, which poses a threat to their multiple ecosystem services. As a response, international environmental agreements and related programs require information about tropical forested landscapes. Despite the increasing quantity and quality of remote sensing-based data, the effective monitoring of forests in the tropics still faces operational challenges: (a) applicability at local levels, with lack of reference or cloud-free information; (b) overcoming geographical, ecological, or biophysical variability; (c): stratification, distinguishing forest categories related to functionality and disturbance history.We conducted an extensive ground verification campaign through 36 landscapes in 9 regions of Zambia, Ecuador and Philippines, which constitute a gradient of pantropical deforestation contexts or forest transitions. We collected over 16,000 ground control points and digitized over 18,000 ha with details on land use and forest disturbance history. We trained a random forest algorithm and generated high-resolution (30 m) binary forest maps covering ~15 Mha, building on 39 optical (Landsat-8), radar (Sentinel-1) and elevation bands, indices and textures. We validated the quality of the outputs across the studied deforestation gradient and compared them to (a): 3 national land cover maps used for international reporting, (b): 4 global forest datasets (Global Forest Change, Copernicus Land Cover, JAXA and TanDEM-X Forest/Non-Forest).Our method generated highly accurate (92%) forest maps for the studied regions when compared to the global datasets, which generally overestimated forest cover. We achieved accuracies similar to the national maps, following a standardized method for all countries. The difficulties in delineating forest increased in more advanced stages of deforestation, with recurring struggles to distinguish non-forest tree-based systems (e.g. perennials, palms, or agroforestry), shrublands and grasslands. Regrowth forests were repeatedly misclassified across contexts, countries and datasets, in contrast to reference or degraded forests. Our results highlight the importance of in situ verification as accompanying method to establish efficient forest monitoring systems, especially in areas with higher rates of forest cover change and in tropical regions of advanced deforestation or early reforestation stages. These are precisely the areas where current REDD+ or Forest Landscape Restoration initiatives take place.

Forest regrowth in Tierra del Fuego, southern Patagonia: landscape drivers and effects on forest structure, soil, and understory attributes

Forest regrowth in Tierra del Fuego, southern Patagonia: landscape drivers and effects on forest structure, soil, and understory attributes

Self-thinning forest understoreys reduce wildfire risk, even in a warming climate

As climatic changes continue to drive increases in the frequency and severity of forest fires, it is critical to understand all of the factors influencing the risk of forest fire. Using a spatial dataset of areas burnt over a 65 year period in a 528 343 ha study area, we examined three possible drivers of flammability dynamics. These were: that forests became more flammable as fine biomass (fuel) returned following disturbance (H1), that disturbance increased flammability by initiating dense understorey growth that later self-thinned (H2), and that climatic effects were more important than either of these internal dynamics (H3). We found that forests were unlikely to burn for a short ‘young’ period (5–7 years) following fire, very likely to burn as the regrowing understorey became taller and denser (regrowth period), then after a total post-disturbance period of 43–56 years (young + regrowth periods), fire became unlikely and continued to decrease in likelihood (mature period). This trend did not change as the climate warmed, although increases in synoptic variability (mean changes in synoptic systems per season) had a pronounced effect on wildfire likelihood overall. Young forest and regrowth forest became increasingly likely to burn in years of greater synoptic variability and the time taken for forests to mature increased, but in years with the most severe synoptic variability, mature forests were the least likely to burn. Our findings offer an explanation for fire behaviour in numerous long-term studies in diverse forest types globally and indicate that, even in the face of a warming climate, ‘ecologically-cooperative’ approaches may be employed that reinforce rather than disrupt natural ecological controls on forest fire. These range from traditional indigenous fire knowledge, to modern targeting of suppression resources to capitalise on the benefits of self-thinning, and minimise the extent of dense regrowth in the landscape.

Who Uses Forest Roads? Has the COVID-19 Pandemics Affected Their Recreational Usage? Case Study from Central Slovakia

Forest roads are necessary to provide access to forests and are also used by users other than forest owners and the timber industry. Their usage for recreation and hiking has been increasing in the last years. From 1/2020 to 12/2020, we performed research on traffic loads and the use of forest roads at an area of the University Forest Enterprise of Technical University in Zvolen. For this purpose, we selected two localities, namely Včelien = A locality and Štagiar = B locality. We monitored transport intensity at selected localities with images obtained from two identical Trail Spromise S308 cameras. We examined the impact of lockdown periods during the COVID-19 pandemics on forest recreation in the year 2020 with the Kruskal–Wallis ANOVA. Multiple comparisons of p values showed there were no differences in the recreational usage of forest roads between the lockdown periods and periods without restrictions. We found that recreation activities peaked in summer and spring. Recreation and transport at selected localities did not have a negative impact on animal occurrence, as the regression and correlation analysis revealed only a low negative relationship with r = 0.029. When considering the number of passages, roads were used for recreation and other non-forestry purposes at approximately 36%. From the perspective of the weight load, recreation accounted for about 10%.