Southern Forest Research Articles

Distinct responses of climate-growth and iWUE in Fagus sylvatica L. at two low elevation sites in southern Italy

In this study, using a dendrological and isotopic approaches, we investigated the responses to climate of two pure Fagus sylvatica L. stands (Campobraca and Falode) in the southernmost part of the distribution range in southern Italy. The δ13C data were used for calculating the intrinsic water use efficiency (iWUE) as a proxy of the balance between the water and carbon cycles. The results showed that the iWUE of both stands was sensitive to the amount of precipitation during the summer months (negative, significant effect) and to atmospheric CO2 concentration. Growth was sensitive to climate only in the Campo Braca site; the most influential variables were the VPD (vapour pressure deficit) and precipitation of the summer months that had a negative and a positive effect, respectively. The iWUE showed a negative correlation with growth in Campo Braca and a non-significant one in Falode. Water availability was the most influential variable on F. sylvatica growth and physiology. The iWUE increase was mainly driven by atmospheric CO2 concentration, and by decreased precipitation, as a response of the trees to drought. Our results highlight the importance of understanding the hydrological changes due to climate change for forecasting/modelling forest responses. CO2 increase does not compensate for the effect of adverse climate on F. sylvatica in the forests of southern Italy, while local conditions play an important role in determining tree growth.

Влияние абиотических факторов на продуктивность тростника Phragmites australis в озёрах юга Западной Сибири

The article presents the results of studying phytomass, stem height and density of thickets (herbage) of Phragmites australis, one of the most common aerial-aquatic plant in the south of Western Siberia. This region is distinguished by a rare combination of chloride, sulfate and soda lakes in a relatively small space. As an eurybiont, reed is highly resistant to water and soil salinity, but high salinity adversely affects its growth and development. The aim of the work was to assess the degree of abiotic factors (pH, mineralization) effect on the quantitative characteristics of reed growing in water bodies with different water mineralization: from 0.005 to 387.6 g/L. In total, we studied 59 freshwater, brackish-water (oligo-, meso- and polyhaline) and hypersaline water bodies, located in various natural zones (southern taiga, forest, forest-steppe, steppe and dry-steppe) in the south of Western Siberia. The studies were carried out in late July – early August from 2012 to 2020 during the period of maximum vegetation of plants. As a result of the studies, it is shown that the optimal for reed growth and development is water mineralization from 0.5 to 5.0 g/L, when the highest values of biomass and plant height are observed. A model based on redundancy analysis (RDA) was built and a correlation analysis was carried out to assess the dependence of phytomass, shoot height and herbage density on abiotic factors. We took into account pH, salinity, and Ca2+, Na+, Mg2+, K+, HCO3-, Cl- and SO42- content. We found that pH and determined by Ca2+ water hardness are the limiting factors in freshwater lakes. In brackish-water meso- and polyhaline, as well as in saline hyperhaline water bodies reed phytomass is affected by a whole range of factors, while shoot height is affected by pH, chlorides, and water hardness, and grass stand density is affected by chlorides and sulfates.

The effect of habitat fragmentation on Malay tapir abundances in Thailand’s protected areas

Habitat loss and fragmentation in tropical regions are major threats to the persistence of endangered Malay tapir (Tapirus indicus). The Malay tapir distribution is largely constrained to fragmented habitats inside protected areas. However, it is unclear how the spatial patterns of habitat fragmentation affect its relative abundance. Here, we investigated the effects of habitat fragmentation on Malay tapir relative abundance in Thailand. We first quantified the spatial patterns of habitat fragmentation within nine of Thailand’s protected areas. Second, we assessed the relationship of fragmentation metrics and relative abundance of Malay tapirs. Third, we identified the relative importance of the fragmentation metrics in explaining relative abundance. We found that tapir abundance remained unexpectedly high in the Southern forest complex despite the fact that tapir habitats were significantly more fragmented there than in the protected area in the western forest complex (p < 0.05). Additionally, we found a significantly negative relation with clumpiness index (R2 = 0.51, p < 0.05). This suggests that other factors may also be influencing their populations, so that the Southern protected areas provide preferred habitat with higher relative proportions of moist evergreen forest, large habitat patch size, precipitation, and elevation. It highlights the importance of interconnected habitat for tapirs, and the benefit of conservation efforts in small, less recognized protected areas.

Is there variation in ten woody species reproductive phenology within the Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot?

ABSTRACT Understanding reproductive phenology in tropical and subtropical forests is challenging. Thus, there are scarce large-scale phenological studies for those forests. Digitized herbarium collections can provide valuable information for understanding biological rhythms, e.g. timing of reproduction. Our aim was to verify the geographical variability of flowering and fruiting patterns and the effects of local climate on the reproductive phenology of woody species in the Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot. We used herbarium records compiled from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility – GBIF, speciesLink, JABOT, and the “Portal de Datos de Biodiversidad Argentina” as a main source of data to assess differences in reproductive phenology for 10 species with wide geographical distribution in the Atlantic Forest. Contrary to our expectations, we observed a non-seasonal reproductive phenology of all species and relations with temperature in the northern forests and to precipitation in the southern forests. When considered individually, there was no obvious relationship between phenophases and climatic factors. We expected that species occurring in a broad geographic distribution would change their biological rhythms related to local environmental factors, but it is likely that widely distributed species are abundant exactly because they are less dependent on biophysical characteristics of the environment. This is the first study comparing species located in the northern and southern regions of the Atlantic Forest using herbarium data, highlighting its importance to understand large scale ecological rhythms in tropical biomes.

Snails of ‘sky islands’ above an equatorial desert: Terrestrial molluscs on four isolated mountain ranges in northern Kenya

AbstractThe mountains of northern Kenya (Ndoto, Nyiro, Kulal and Marsabit) are separated by semi‐arid plains uninhabitable for most terrestrial molluscs (snails and slugs). Nevertheless, each “sky island” supports a little‐known forest mollusc fauna. The diversity and endemism of these faunas are addressed here based on surveys and the limited records available in the literature. In total 75 forest mollusc species and subspecies were found, including six previously undescribed Streptaxidae and many first records. Most previously recorded taxa were refound. The richness of faunas is broadly comparable to that of other Kenyan forests surveyed using similar methods (Ndoto 41 taxa, Nyiro 40, Kulal 33, Marsabit 34). A large proportion of the forest taxa (24 taxa, 29%) are endemic to Kenya north of the Mathews Range. More than half of these (14 taxa, 17% of the total) are known only from a single mountain range. At Nyiro, where different forest types were compared, fewer endemic species were found in Juniper forest than in other forest types. Moving northwards along the Ndoto‐Nyiro‐Kulal chain, diversity declines while endemism increases, perhaps reflecting increasing isolation from the southern forests, but the trends are not significant when Marsabit is included. Across the four ranges, neither diversity nor endemism is clearly linked to the isolation, maximum elevation, forest cover or geological origin of each range (Kulal and Marsabit are volcanoes, while Nyiro and Ndoto are uplifted basement rock). Instead, the unique circumstances of each range create a distinctive set of isolated faunas.

Forest degradation hinders soil fauna's contribution to litter decomposition and community dynamics in Andean temperate Nothofagus forests

Biodiversity losses driven by human disturbance hinder chief ecosystem functions like litter decomposition, among the most critical processes regulating forest ecosystems' carbon and nutrient cycles. Historical logging, wildfire, and ongoing livestock grazing pressure have degraded most southern temperate Nothofagus forests. Yet, the effect of forest degradation on soil fauna composition and, in turn, litter decomposition and nutrient cycling still need to be determined. This study aims to i) quantify the contribution of soil fauna to litter decomposition and mineralization of C, N, and P in Nothofagus sp. forest displaying different levels of degradation (mature, secondary, and degraded forests and a newly reforested site) and ii) assess the effect of forest degradation on the temporal composition of soil invertebrates' communities. Decomposition bags with 0.1 and 2 mm mesh were installed in long-term research plots across forest conditions. Litter decomposition and C, N, and P mineralization were estimated monthly for one year. Likewise, meso- and macrofauna's richness, abundance, and diversity were assessed bimonthly during the same period. We found that the contribution of mesofauna to decomposition was the lowest in the newly reforested site and 20 % higher in the degraded forest than in mature and secondary forests. Soil fauna substantially increased C, N, and P mineralization, particularly in the degraded forest. Differences in fauna's contribution to litter decomposition were likely related to changes in the community composition, primarily composed of detritivores in the three forested conditions and phytophagous and predators in the newly reforested site. We concluded that forest degradation modified the invertebrate community composition, and soil fauna enhances litter decomposition and nutrient mineralization in the degraded forests. In addition, our data suggest that forest degradation leads to a loss of invertebrate meso- and macrofauna orders, which alter litter decomposition processes.

Response of soil microorganisms to soil fertility in the process of vegetation rehabilitation of degraded Pinus massoniana forest

AbstractThe rehabilitation of diverse and three‐dimensional forest vegetation patterns is crucial for preventing forest degradation and improving soil fertility. However, the relationship between soil microbial community and soil fertility was not clear. To accurately assess the capability of vegetation restoration measures on the real impact on degraded soil ecosystems. We selected three vegetation rehabilitation models of degraded Pinus massoniana forests in typical soil erosion areas in China as the research objects, with untreated bare land as the control. All three vegetation construction patterns increased the abundance and diversity of soil bacteria and fungi, thereby enhancing the stability of the soil ecosystem. Additionally, the vegetation rehabilitation models also altered the community structure of soil bacteria and fungi in the degraded P. massoniana forests. The pH and soil fertility index (IFI) were the main factors leading to variations in the community structure of the soil bacteria and fungi. Among them, the grass‐planting model showed a significantly greater improvement in the soil fertility of degraded P. massoniana forests than the shrub‐planting and arbor‐planting models. Furthermore, Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, and Glomeromycota exhibited the most significant response to IFI, indicating their potential as indicator microorganisms for soil fertility changes. The improvement in soil fertility in degraded P. massoniana forests was influenced primarily by the increase in urease activity (S‐UE) according to the vegetation rehabilitation models (84.20%, p = 0.000). In conclusion, the grass‐planting system effectively improved the soil ecosystem quality of degraded P. massoniana forests in southern erosion‐prone areas of China and was suitable for further application.

Wild-type Caenorhabditis sinica, a model nematode for speciation and evolution, massively found in Vietnam

Caenorhabditis sinica is a male/female species, in which the genetic diversity is possibly high. Thus, the species is advantageous for the understanding of the mechanisms of diversity, evolution, and adaptation within the nematode genus Caenorhabditis. Previous studies reported the geographic distribution of C. sinica only in China; nonetheless, this should be more convincing for its ecology. We allegedly surveyed the Caenorhabditis species and their diversity in the forests of Vietnam. We found 59 C. sinica strains, and this therefore indicates the vast variation that is 85.88% and 100% identical within isolated wild-type strains. They unequally present in habitats and are enormous in the northern forest, and rarer in the southern forest. The comparison of 18S rDNA barcode sequences from 59 C. sinica isolates by nucleotide sequence alignment showed the consistent diversity among the strains in or off the same ecologies, and all are comparable with the ever-first isolated strain JU727.

Atlas Florae Europaeae notes, 34. Distributions and two conservation profiles of East European species of the Cytisusratisbonensis group (Fabaceae).

The Cytisusratisbonensis group (Fabaceae) includes small shrubs with attractive yellow flowers, used in ornamental cultivation. It is widely distributed in southern forest, forest steppe and steppe zones of Eastern Europe, both in the lowlands and low mountains. This group is notorious for its taxonomic complexity and difficulties in identification, which accounted for incongruent taxonomic treatments and common identification errors, and resulted in a poor understanding of the distribution areas. The increasing availability of herbarium collections and accumulation of human observations through digital resources require their critical taxonomic revision and update in order to provide reliable data for plant species mapping, conservation and analysis of distribution areas. This paper describes a distributional dataset of East European species of the Cytisusratisbonensis group, which was prepared for the pan-European grid mapping project, Atlas Florae Europaeae. The taxonomic revision includes seven species and two interspecific hybrids and is based on the critical evaluation of diagnostic characters, nomenclature and synonymy. The territorial scope of this study is Eastern Europe, but it also includes some data from Central Europe, the Caucasus and the neighbouring territories of Siberia and Kazakhstan, which are included in order to trace eastern and south-eastern limits of the species distributions and to establish reliable synonymy. We report 3699 native occurrence records included in the dataset; these records are based on major herbarium collections which are known to hold specimens from Eastern Europe (DNZ, KRA, KRAM, KW, LE, LW, LWKS, MHA, MSK, MSKH, MSKU, MW), complemented by selected specimens from other herbaria (BUNS, CSAU, H, NNSU, NS, NSK, OXF, PVB, RWBG, TUL). The herbarium collections were examined largely de visu, but partly online. Besides the herbarium specimens, recognisable photographs documenting human observations on online platforms (florafauna.by, iNaturalist, Plantarium, UkrBIN) were also examined and included. All specimen records are accompanied with textual data and georeferences, which were produced for this dataset. Point and contour distribution maps are created for each accepted species. According to the distributional data, the Cytisusratisbonensis group may be classified as temperate lowland and steppic in Eastern Europe. Among European endemic shrubs, C.cinereus (as C.paczoskii) was assessed in 2017 as Near Threatened, whereas its new IUCN protection status is proposed as Least Concern because the new data demonstrated that its distribution area is much greater than previously believed. A species restricted to the Crimea, C.wulffii, is assessed here for the first time as Vulnerable because of its restricted area and small population size (criteria D1,2).

Address Form of Children in Communication (Through the Novel “Southen Forest Land”)

The article focuses on understanding children’s address forms through the novel “Southern Forest Land” from the following aspects: children's address terms to children and children’s address terms to adults. From the survey and classification results, we found that children's address in communication concentrates on two situations (family and community) with six thematic groups associated with two pairs of roles (upper-lower role pair and peer role pair Children's address terms to children have 2 forms of addressing and 5 forms of calling, while children's address terms to adults have 3 forms of addressing and 7 forms of calling. Analysis of the characteristics of address affirms that the language used by children is diverse, reflecting the entire spiritual life, innocence, and simplicity of children. It also reflects the honest, straightforward, warm, generous, and affectionate culture of the people in the Southern region.

Are southern temperate urban natural forests a suitable habitat for beetle diversity? A case study in Chile

Are southern temperate urban natural forests a suitable habitat for beetle diversity? A case study in Chile

Invasive behaviour of oak lace bug in forest ecosystems: a comparative analysis between thermophilous and mesophilous oak forests

Forest ecosystems provide invaluable ecological, economic, and social benefits, making them essential for global well-being. However, these ecosystems face various threats, including biological invasions by alien species. Among these, the oak lace bug (OLB), an invasive North American insect, has rapidly spread in Europe, impacting oak forests and raising concerns about its adaptation to new environments. OLB feeds on the undersides of oak leaves, extracting sap and causing chlorotic discoloration. Severe infestations lead to premature defoliation, increased susceptibility to diseases or pests and can also result in a substantial reduction in photosynthesis activity. This study aims to analyse OLB’s invasive behaviour in Romanian forest ecosystems, with a specific focus on the differences between thermophilous and mesophilous oak forests. The analysis covers 6 years of data and reveals critical insights. In the initial 4 years, OLB predominantly inhabited the extracarpathian regions of Romania, with concentrated presence in the southern, western, and northwestern areas. Forest ecosystems mainly affected between 2017 and 2020 were characterized by thermophilous oak forests in southern and western regions. However, in the last 2 years (2021–2022), OLB presence increased, particularly in lowland ecosystems, albeit with reduced damage intensity. The analysis also unveiled an adaptation and expansion of OLB in mesophilous forest ecosystems. Climatic factors, specifically temperature and precipitation, significantly influenced OLB’s behaviour, points with severe attacks exhibiting specific climatic conditions. In summary, this study provides crucial insights into OLB’s behaviour, emphasizing the role of climatic and environmental factors in its invasive tendencies.

Pleistocene Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus Cuvier, 1823) in the Iberian Peninsula: new evidence and a complete review

The Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus Cuvier, 1823) is a medium-sized ursid that currently mostly inhabits environments of dense foliage and forests in southern and eastern Asia. This species is currently extinct in Europe, but during the Middle Pleistocene and the beginning of the Late Pleistocene its distribution was wider and reached until Southern Siberia, the Ural Mountains, Caucasus and western Europe. The main objective of this work is to provide a detailed description of all the Ursus thibetanus remains from the Iberian Peninsula, describing for the first time the new remains, and discuss the chronological framework of the presence of this taxon in the largest of the southern European peninsulas. The Iberian Peninsula has yielded paleontological evidence of this taxon in five sites (Bolomor, Koskobilo, La Llanera, Cau d'en Borràs and Villavieja), and we present new paleontological evidence from the latter three sites, which is important due to the scarcity of U. thibetanus fossil remains. We compare the morphology of these new remains with both European Pleistocene fossils and recent U. thibetanus. Up until recently, its distribution in Iberia was thought to be restricted to the East of the Iberian Peninsula. But the recent identification of U. thibetanus remains in Koskobilo (Navarre) and in La Llanera (Oviedo) has resulted in a wider distribution of this species than what was previously thought. The dental remains from Koskobilo, La Llanera, Villavieja, Bolomor and Cau d'en Borràs fit well within the Pleistocene U. thibetanus from Europe morphologically and metrically. Some Iberian remains are morphologically similar to previously described U. thibetanus Pleistocene fossil subspecies. A M2 from Bolomor is morphologically closer to U. t. mediterraneus (MIS 7), and a M2 from Koskobilo is similar to U. t. kurteni (MIS 6–7). The postcranial fossil remains from Cau d'en Borràs and Villavieja fit well within the recent U. thibetanus range of variation. Except for the remains from Bolomor (MIS 5e and MIS 7), the rest of the Iberian U. thibetanus fossils are difficult to ascribe chronologically. Based on other biochronological proxies, Cau d'en Borràs and Koskobilo can tentatively be assigned to the MIS 7–5 range, Villavieja could be assigned to MIS 13–5, and La Llanera is probably the oldest record of U. thibetanus in Iberia (MIS 15–13). However, until new direct datings are performed on the sites, the proposed chronologies should be regarded with caution.

The main forest species encountered in southern and central Benin, West Africa.

The south of Benin, a country in West Africa, is still home to remnants of dense forests that benefit from a particularly rainy sub-equatorial climate, with annual rainfall of up to 1,200 mm. These forest ecosystems are an integral part of the West African forest block, which stretches from Liberia to Togo. However, despite their richness and ecological importance, these forests are unfortunately subject to strong human pressures, particularly from slash-and-burn agriculture, intensive logging and the growing urbanisation of coastal areas. Preserving these forests is crucial, however, as they are home to remarkable plant and animal biodiversity, with many endemic species. What's more, these forests play an essential role in regulating the local climate, protecting soil and water resources, as well as providing local populations with a vital source of energy wood, non-timber forest products and support for their traditional agricultural practices. Faced with these conservation challenges, identifying and characterising the main tree species found in the forests of southern and central Benin, forest species and their ecology is an essential prerequisite for implementing sustainable management and restoration strategies for these threatened forest ecosystems in southern Benin. This work aims to identify and draw attention to the different forest species, specially tree forest species present in southern and central Benin. The dataset provides information on forest species found in southern and central Benin, West Africa. This dataset is extremely useful for forestry research, as it focuses mainly on the various forest species of major importance. It can be used as a basis for characterising individuals or populations of species, based on their abundance in relation to anthropogenic pressure and changes in environmental conditions.These species are characteristic of forests and, above all, are of particular interest both to populations and to managers of protected areas. Field collections were initiated in 2007 as part of natural forest inventory work. The data collected have been completed by various field works that followed this work on forest species in southern Benin. The latest version of the dataset is publicly and freely accessible on the GBIF website at the address https://www.gbif.org/dataset/aff3a10a-a86b-4eff-98e4-d63f92fd6f7e.It should be noted that the fact that the collection and monitoring were carried out in southern Benin, a region known for its great diversity of species, over a period of 10 years making these data particularly relevant information to study the effects of climate change and human pressure on ecosystems in this area.

The effectiveness of the use of certain trace elements and stimulants for the cultivation of sunflower and corn in the Southern Forest Steppe of Ukraine

The effectiveness of the use of certain trace elements and stimulants for the cultivation of sunflower and corn in the Southern Forest Steppe of Ukraine

Turkey Oak (Quercus cerris L.) Resilience to Climate Change: Insights from Coppice Forests in Southern and Central Europe

Turkey oak (Quercus cerris L.) is a thermophilic oak species that is gaining importance in the context of ongoing climate change because of its better resistance to climatic extremes and drier conditions. Therefore, this article focuses on Turkey oak’s role and growth properties in the coppice forests of Southern Europe (Italy, Bulgaria) compared to similar site conditions in Central Europe (Slovakia, Czechia). The aims are to evaluate the basic dendrometry indicators, stand biodiversity, growth dynamics, and the effect of climatic factors on tree-ring increment on specific site chronologies. We found that the tree density in coppices of 50–60 years varied between 475 and 775 trees ha−1, and the stand volume ranged from 141 to 407 m3 ha−1. The complex stand diversity of all plots ranged from a monotonous to uniform structure. The size of tree-ring growth was closely related to indicators of stand density. The lowest influence of climatic factors on tree-ring growth was found in sites in Italy and the highest in Slovakia. The primary limiting factor for growth was the lack of precipitation during the growing season, especially in June and July. In contrast, temperature had a marginal effect on radial growth compared to precipitation. The radial growth in research plots in Southern Europe goes through longer 6 to 8-year growth cycles, and in Central European sites, it goes through shorter cycles of 2.4 to 4.8 years, which confirms better growth conditions in this region. The studied coppice stands exhibit a stable reaction to climate change. Yet, regarding cyclical growth, the Central European stands benefit from an advantageous climate and grow better than in Southern Europe. As part of the changing environmental conditions, Turkey oak is becoming an important tree species that can achieve high production potential even in drier habitats due to its regeneration characteristic as coppice and may play a critical role in its northerly introduction in Europe.

A spectral-temporal constrained deep learning method for tree species mapping of plantation forests using time series Sentinel-2 imagery

Plantation forests provide critical ecosystem services and have experienced worldwide expansion during the past few decades. Accurate mapping of tree species through remote sensing is critical for managing plantation forests. The typical temporal behaviors and traits of tree species in satellite image time series (SITS) generate temporal and spectral features in multiple phenological stages that are critical to improve tree species mapping. However, the diverse input features, sequential relations and complex structures in SITS drastically increase the dimension and difficulty of spectral-temporal feature extraction, which challenges the capacity of many general classifiers not explicitly adapted for spectral-temporal learning. As a result, there is still a lack of a method that could automatically extract spectral-temporal features with high separability and regional adaptability from high-dimensional SITS for tree species mapping of plantation forests. Moreover, the effects of varying temporal resolution and feature combination on the plantation tree species mapping are under-explored. Here, we developed a multi-head attention-based method for automatically extracting spectral-temporal features with high separability based on a modified Transformer network (Transformer4SITS) for improved plantation tree species mapping. The end-to-end network model consists of a feature extraction module to learn deep spectral-temporal features from SITS and a fusion module to combine multiple features for improving mapping accuracy. We applied this method to two representative plantation forests in southern and northern China for tree species mapping. The results show that: (1) Transformer4SITS method could self-adaptively extract typical spectral-temporal features of key phenological stages (e.g., greenness rising and falling) from SITS, and achieved significantly improved accuracies by at most 15% in comparison with all four baseline methods (i.e., long short-term memory, harmonic analysis, time-weighted dynamic time warping, linear discriminant analysis); (2) time series with higher temporal resolution tended to produce more accurate species maps consistently across two sites, with their overall accuracies (OA) respectively increasing from 91.05% and 84.33% (60-day) to 94.88% and 88.72% (5-day), but the effect of high temporal resolution respectively leveled off around 90-day and 50-day resolution across two sites; (3) the mapping results using all available bands and two-band spectral indices outperformed the results using a subset of them, but with only modest increase in the accuracy (i.e., OA increased from 93.63% and 86.01% to 94.88% and 88.72%. This study thus provides a state-of-the-art deep learning-based method for improved tree species mapping, which is critical for sustainable management and biodiversity monitoring of plantation forests across large scales.

Long-term stability of temperate Australian wet forest-moorland mosaics despite recurrent fires associated with late Holocene climate change

ContextThe primary factors(s) responsible for the maintenance of Alternative biome states (ABS) in world forest biomes remains unclear and debatable, partly due to insufficient long-term ecological data from suitable ecosystem sites. The occurrence of moorland in southern and western Tasmanian wet temperate forest presents a suitable setting to test for ABS and understand the main stabilizing factors of ABS.ObjectivesWe use a palaeoecological approach to test for ABS and identify the degree of vegetation change and the effect of climate change and fire occurrence associated with ABS in southern Tasmania.MethodsSediment sequence from sink-hole lake in a forest and nearby pond in southern Tasmania were analysed for pollen and charcoal to reconstruct histories of forest, moorland and fire in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA). Reconstructions were compared to palaeoclimate record.ResultsMoorland and forest in southern Tasmania have occupied the same habitat for at least the last 2600 years, and neither past climate change nor fire occurrence affected the stability of the vegetation mosaic. We suspect that localized environmental settings, such as topography and edaphic conditions are the primary stabilizing factors of the forest-moorland mosaics.ConclusionsThe observed stable vegetation mosaics in our study is contrary to the dominant ecological paradigm of landscape dynamics currently used to manage the TWWHA, and there is a need to refine the ecological basis of fire management in the area. Similar targeted palaeoecological studies are needed to fully understand the underlying factors responsible for the persistence of treeless vegetation in world forest biomes.

Genetic Variation and Evolutionary History of the Threatened Dipterocarpus turbinatus C.F.Gaertn. Detected Using Microsatellites

Dipterocarpus turbinatus C.F.Gaertn. is a valuable timber tree indigenous to the lowland tropical forests of southern and central Vietnam. It is in danger of extinction due to fragmented habitats and overexploitation. Therefore, assessing the genetic diversity and demographic history of this species is essential to providing a platform for conservation activities. Herein, we analyzed 281 D. turbinatus trees from 10 populations representing their natural distribution range in Vietnam using nine polymorphic microsatellites to provide valuable information for conservation activities. We detected genetic diversity within these populations (0.285 and 0.328 for observed and expected heterozygosity, respectively), as well as population genetic differentiation (a Wei and Cockerham value of 0.202 and a Hedrick value of 0.32). Clustering analysis based on different approaches revealed three genetic clusters which were significantly correlated to gene flow across the geographic distribution range of D. turbinatus in tropical evergreen forests. Approximate Bayesian computation suggested that the D. turbinatus populations had an evolutionary history consistent with divergence during the last glacial maximum. Based on our results, we recommend the in situ conservation of several populations with high genetic diversity, high allelic richness, or private alleles, and the gathering of the seeds of the remaining populations for ex situ conservation.

Reforming Forest Policies and Management in Russia: Problems and Challenges

The future development of forest industries in Russia, besides the country’s geopolitical issues, could be seriously undermined by the depletion of forest resources available under the current model of forest management that mainly relies on clearcutting mature coniferous forests and leaving these areas for natural regeneration. The introduction of a new model that prioritizes efficient forest regeneration faces many problems on the ground. The efficiency of the use of funds allocated by both governmental and private logging companies for forest regeneration and subsequent tending of young stands should urgently be significantly increased. The government should also develop pragmatic economic incentives to encourage logging concession holders to switch to the new model and to address the problem of the spatial shift (demarginalization) of the country’s forest complex from northern and eastern “green fields” to secondary mixed and southern taiga forests. Instead of harvesting low-productivity northern taiga forests of European Russia and remote areas of Central and Eastern Siberia, wood sourcing should be mainly concentrated in the immediate vicinity of existing mills. Moreover, the development of “greenfield” projects in wilderness forest areas that currently lack any kind of infrastructure should not be encouraged. The focus on the regions with productive southern taiga, mixed and broadleaf forests, developed wood-processing infrastructure, and high forest roads density could ensure the economically beneficial transition towards resilient forestry.