scholarly journals One Century of Forest Monitoring Data in Switzerland Reveals Species- and Site-Specific Trends of Climate-Induced Tree Mortality

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia Etzold ◽  
Kasia Ziemińska ◽  
Brigitte Rohner ◽  
Alessandra Bottero ◽  
Arun K. Bose ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tree Mortality ◽  
Forest Monitoring ◽  
Monitoring Data ◽  
Site Specific

Integrating multi-source data and model projections to address carbon cycling in central European forests

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarina Merganicova ◽  
Roland Hollos ◽  
Zoltan Barcza ◽  
Jan Merganic ◽  
Zuzana Sitkova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Factors ◽  
Carbon Cycling ◽  
Forest Dynamics ◽  
Forest Growth ◽  
Forest Monitoring ◽  
Monitoring Data ◽  
Central European ◽  
Long Term Monitoring ◽  
Term Monitoring

<p>Carbon cycling in forest ecosystems is affected by a number of interacting environmental factors. Here we analyse carbon sequestration in temperate forests composed of three common Central European species: Norway spruce, European beech and oak along an extended environmental gradient across Central Europe using long-term monitoring data and process-based modelling of forest dynamics. For the analyses we used selected ICP forest monitoring plots, long-term forest research plots from thinning trials, and highly-equipped intensively monitored plots from five central European countries: Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic. Their temporal development was simulated using a process-based model Biome-BGCMuSo, which is sensitive to soil and climate conditions. Since such models of forest growth dynamics implicitly describe relationships between forest productivity and environmental conditions, their implementation can reveal the main factors affecting carbon cycling in forests along the gradients of latitude, altitude, or other environmental factors as long as they are included in the models. The study indicates that by linking long-term monitoring data and forest growth modelling we can not only test the model capacity to simulate forest dynamics, but above all we can increase our capacity to address main challenges faced by the central European forestry with respect to the global climate change.  </p>

Vulnerability of Amazonian tree communities to global change

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriane Esquivel‐Muelbert ◽  
Thomas Pugh ◽  
Timothy Baker ◽  
Kyle Dexter ◽  
Simon Lewis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tree Mortality ◽  
Slow Growth ◽  
Forest Monitoring ◽  
Amazon Forest ◽  
Principal Mechanism ◽  
Dead Trees ◽  
Tree Communities ◽  
Shade Tolerant Species ◽  
Vegetation Models ◽  
Global Vegetation

<p>Tree mortality is the principal mechanism whereby forests lose living biomass. This process has been observed to have increased across the Amazon forest over recent decades. Greater tree mortality rates have been attributed largely to an increase in the frequency and intensity of droughts, and to the intensification of competition, as a consequence of greater tree growth stimulated by higher CO<sub>2</sub>concentrations. Analysing the trends in mortality for different taxa allows us to test the contribution of these different drivers to the rise in tree mortality. Droughts are expected to kill wet-affiliated, large, and low wood density taxa. Increased competition is likely to affect slow growth, understory taxa. We assess data from over 30 years of forest monitoring across the Amazon to investigate the changes in mortality across different taxa, providing a greater understanding of the drivers of increased tree mortality across the basin and the vulnerability of these forests to water stress. We observed that the proportion of dead trees across different taxa has changed across the Amazon forest. We show an increase in the mortality of drought-vulnerable trees, particularly in those areas where dry climatic events have intensified over the last 30 years. However, the proportion of large taxa within the dead trees has not changed over the length of this study. We also observed indications of increasing competition-driven mortality represented by a decrease in abundance of slow-growth shade-tolerant species. A suite of mechanisms, varying regionally in importance, are acting synchronically to drive recent increases in tree death across Amazonia. The patterns and mechanisms observed here are amenable to incorporation within the latest generation of global vegetation models and Earth system models, providing a basis for improved simulations of forest dynamics in one of the world’s most carbon-dense ecosystems.</p>

Estimating tree growth from complex forest monitoring data

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 1288-1296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Eitzel ◽  
John Battles ◽  
Robert York ◽  
Jonas Knape ◽  
Perry de Valpine
Keyword(s):  
Tree Growth ◽  
Forest Monitoring ◽  
Monitoring Data

scholarly journals Comparing Methods to Impute Missing Daily Ground-Level PM10 Concentrations between 2010–2017 in South Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 3374
Author(s):  
Oluwaseyi Olalekan Arowosegbe ◽  
Martin Röösli ◽  
Nino Künzli ◽  
Apolline Saucy ◽  
Temitope Christina Adebayo-Ojo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Air Pollution ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Ambient Air ◽  
Pollution Monitoring ◽  
Monitoring Data ◽  
Ambient Air Pollution ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Daily Pm10

Good quality and completeness of ambient air quality monitoring data is central in supporting actions towards mitigating the impact of ambient air pollution. In South Africa, however, availability of continuous ground-level air pollution monitoring data is scarce and incomplete. To address this issue, we developed and compared different modeling approaches to impute missing daily average particulate matter (PM10) data between 2010 and 2017 using spatiotemporal predictor variables. The random forest (RF) machine learning method was used to explore the relationship between average daily PM10 concentrations and spatiotemporal predictors like meteorological, land use and source-related variables. National (8 models), provincial (32) and site-specific (44) RF models were developed to impute missing daily PM10 data. The annual national, provincial and site-specific RF cross-validation (CV) models explained on average 78%, 70% and 55% of ground-level PM10 concentrations, respectively. The spatial components of the national and provincial CV RF models explained on average 22% and 48%, while the temporal components of the national, provincial and site-specific CV RF models explained on average 78%, 68% and 57% of ground-level PM10 concentrations, respectively. This study demonstrates a feasible approach based on RF to impute missing measurement data in areas where data collection is sparse and incomplete.

scholarly journals Long-term forest monitoring unravels constant mortality rise in European forests

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan-Peter George ◽  
Tanja GM Sanders ◽  
Mathias Neumann ◽  
Carmelo Cammalleri ◽  
Juergen V. Vogt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Tree Mortality ◽  
Single Species ◽  
Forest Monitoring ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
European Forests ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
Crown Defoliation ◽  
Soil Moisture Anomaly

European forests are an important source for timber production, human welfare, income, protection and biodiversity. During the last two decades, Europe has experienced a number of droughts which were exceptionally within the last 500 years both in terms of duration and intensity and these droughts seem to left remarkable imprints in the mortality dynamics of European forests. However, systematic observations on tree decline with emphasis on single species together with high-resolution drought data has been scarce so far so that deeper insights into mortality dynamics and drought occurrence is still limiting our understanding at continental scale. Here we make use of the ICP Forest crown defoliation dataset, permitting us to retrospectively monitor tree mortality for four major conifers, two major broadleaves as well as a pooled dataset of nearly all minor tree species in Europe. In total, we analysed more than 3 million observations gathered during the last 25 years and employed a high-resolution drought index which is able to assess soil moisture anomaly based on a hydrological water-balance and runoff model every ten days globally. We found significant overall and species-specific increasing trends in mortality rates accompanied by decreasing soil moisture. A generalized linear model identified previous-year soil moisture anomaly as the most important driver of mortality patterns in European forests. Significant interactions appeared between previous-year soil moisture and stand water regime in conifers, strongly suggesting that conifers growing at productive sites are more vulnerable under drought. We conclude that mortality patterns in European forests are currently reaching a concerning upward trend which could be further accelerated by global change-type droughts.

scholarly journals 37 Years of Forest Monitoring in Switzerland: Drought Effects on Fagus sylvatica

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Braun ◽  
Sven-Eric Hopf ◽  
Simon Tresch ◽  
Jan Remund ◽  
Christian Schindler
Keyword(s):  
Fagus Sylvatica ◽  
Tree Mortality ◽  
European Beech ◽  
Forest Monitoring ◽  
Deciduous Tree ◽  
P Deficiency ◽  
Crown Transparency ◽  
Foliar Phosphorus ◽  
Branch Dieback ◽  
Drought Effects

European beech is one of the most important deciduous tree species in natural forest ecosystems in Central Europe. Its dominance is now being questioned by the emerging drought damages due to the increased incidence of severe summer droughts. In Switzerland, Fagus sylvatica have been observed in the Intercantonal Forest Observation Program since 1984. The dataset presented here includes 179176 annual observations of beech trees on 102 plots during 37 years. The plots cover gradients in drought, nitrogen deposition, ozone, age, altitude, and soil chemistry. In dry regions of Switzerland, the dry and hot summer of 2018 caused a serious branch dieback, increased mortality in Fagus sylvatica and increased yellowing of leaves. Beech trees recovered less after 2018 than after the dry summer 2003 which had been similar in drought intensity except that the drought in 2018 started earlier in spring. Our data analyses suggest the importance of drought in subsequent years for crown transparency and mortality in beech. The drought in 2018 followed previous dry years of 2015 and 2017 which pre-weakened the trees. Our long-term data indicate that the drought from up to three previous years were significant predictors for both tree mortality and for the proportion of trees with serious (>60%) crown transparency. The delay in mortality after the weakening event suggests also the importance of weakness parasites. The staining of active vessels with safranine revealed that the cavitation caused by the low tree water potentials in 2018 persisted at least partially in 2019. Thus, the ability of the branches to conduct water was reduced and the branches dried out. Furthermore, photooxidation in light-exposed leaves has increased strongly since 2011. This phenomenon was related to low concentrations of foliar phosphorus (P) and hot temperatures before leaf harvest. The observed drought effects can be categorized as (i) hydraulic failure (branch dieback), (ii) energy starvation as a consequence of closed stomata and P deficiency (photooxidation) and (iii) infestation with weakness parasites (beech bark disease and root rots).

scholarly journals Evaluation and interpretation of regional and site-specific hydrochemical data bases for water quality assessment

1999 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 565-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. G. Hutchins ◽  
B. Reynolds ◽  
B. Smith ◽  
G. N. Wiggans ◽  
T. R. Lister
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Temporal Variability ◽  
Stream Water ◽  
Monitoring Data ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Variability ◽  
Stream Chemistry ◽  
Stream Order ◽  
Time Step ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Site Specific

Abstract. The spatial distribution of stream water composition, as determined by the Geochemical Baseline Survey of the Environment (G-BASE) conducted by the British Geological Survey (BGS) can be successfully related under baseflow conditions to bedrock geochemistry. Further consideration of results in conjunction with site-specific monitoring data enables factors controlling both spatial and temporal variability in major element composition to be highlighted and allows the value of the survey to be enhanced. Hence, chemical data (i) from streams located on Lower Silurian (Llandovery) bedrock at 1 km2 resolution collected as part of the G-BASE survey of Wales and the West Midlands and (ii) from catchment monitoring studies located in upland mid-Wales (conducted by Institute of Terrestrial Ecology), have been considered together as an example. Classification of the spatial survey data set in terms of potentially controlling factors was carried out so as to illustrate the level of explanation they could give in terms of observed spatial chemical variability. It was therefore hypothesised that on a geological lithostratigraphic series of limited geochemical contrast, altitude and land-use factors provide better explanation of this variability than others such as lithology at sampling site and stream order. At an individual site, temporal variability was also found to be of considerable significance and, at a monthly time-step, is explicable in terms of factors such as antecedent conditions and seasonality. Data suggest that the degree of this variability may show some relationship with stream order and land-use. Monitoring data from the region also reveal that relationships between stream chemistry and land-use may prove to be strong not only at base flow but also in storm flow conditions. In a wider context, predictions of the sensitivity of stream water to acidification based on classifications of soil and geology are successful on a regional scale. However, the study undertaken here has shown that use of such classification schemes on a catchment scale results in considerable uncertainty associated with prediction. Uncertainties are due to the large degree of variability in stream chemistry encountered both spatially within geological units and temporally at individual sampling sites.

scholarly journals Identifying Common Practices and Challenges for Local Urban Tree Monitoring Programs Across the United States

2013 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara Roman ◽  
E. Gregory McPherson ◽  
Bryant Scharenbroch ◽  
Julia Bartens
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Urban Forest ◽  
Urban Forestry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tree Planting ◽  
Forest Monitoring ◽  
Monitoring Data ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Monitoring Programs ◽  
Tree Care

Urban forest monitoring data are essential to assess the impacts of tree planting campaigns and management programs. Local practitioners have monitoring projects that have not been well documented in the urban forestry literature. To learn more about practitioner-driven monitoring efforts, the authors surveyed 32 local urban forestry organizations across the United States about the goals, challenges, methods, and uses of their monitoring programs, using an e-mailed questionnaire. Non-profit organizations, municipal agencies, state agencies, and utilities participated. One-half of the organizations had six or fewer urban forestry staff. Common goals for monitoring included evaluating the success of tree planting and management, taking a proactive approach towards tree care, and engaging communities. The most commonly recorded data were species, condition rating, mortality status, and diameter at breast height. Challenges included limited staff and funding, difficulties with data management and technology, and field crew training. Programs used monitoring results to inform tree planting and maintenance practices, provide feedback to individuals responsible for tree care, and manage tree risk. Participants emphasized the importance of planning ahead: carefully considering what data to collect, setting clear goals, developing an appropriate database, and planning for funding and staff time. To improve the quality and consistency of monitoring data across cities, researchers can develop standardized protocols and be responsive to practitioner needs and organizational capacities.

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