Publications

Prior tree marking is used to guide loggers or forest machine operators on which trees to cut to achieve the desirable silvicultural quality of a thinning treatment. In the future, this ben-eficial but expensive human work could be automated with advanced driver assistance systems. This study aimed to investigate the effect of conventional prior tree marking on cutting productivity and harvesting quality of the first and later thinnings. A comparative time study was conducted with four experienced harvester operators. The operators thinned 4825 stems with the cut-to-length (CTL) harvesting method in eight thinning stands. The time consumption of the different time elements of cutting work was measured to model the cutting productivity with average values or regress these values against the stem volume or density of re-moval. Prior tree marking increased the cutting productivity by an average of 2.8% in the first thinnings and 2.7% in later thinnings by reducing the time consumption of boom-out (posi-tioning the harvester head for cut) and moving. The operator effect was notable, even though only experienced operators participated in the study. For some operators, prior tree marking did not make cutting work more efficient, and sometimes hampered it. Prior tree marking improved the quality of the remaining stands in thinnings by producing a more accurate density of remaining trees after the harvesting operation in relation to thinning guidelines. When the stands were not marked, the operators chose trees of poor quality with almost the same accuracy as the forester. These findings lay the foundation for the next-generation op-erators’ guidance and decision support systems, which could detect trees around the harvester and guide the operator in tree selection and managing better thinning intensity in cutting work. Although prior tree marking increased productivity only marginally, the improvement in the quality of harvesting operations must be acknowledged. © 2023 by the authors. Submitted for possible open access publication under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.

Local decisionmakers managing forests for sequestering carbon and mitigating disturbance face increasing pressures from climate change, while needing to derive revenue from forests resources and balance diverse stakeholder concerns. Decision support systems (DSS) that use freely available satellite data are effective tools for forest management decision-making, due to the broad spatial coverage and temporal consistency of this data. However, the literature demonstrates that many DSS developed by researchers incorporating satellite data are often not utilized by decision makers. This is in part due to a lack of stakeholder engagement in DSS development. Here, we employ an intentional stakeholder engagement process to develop an accessible DSS incorporating satellite data. This process is applied with the Yurok Tribe – an Indigenous community in California – towards the goal of managing forests for carbon sequestration. We use system architecture framework (SAF) to translate stakeholder objectives into targeted analyses and the environment-vulnerability-decision-technology (EVDT) integrated modeling framework to incorporate contextual local infrastructure and land ownership information alongside satellite data analyses. Satellite data analyses classify tree cover and track Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) over time. We compare and show that trends in our analysis agree with independent global tree cover and biomass datasets. These analyses meet the Tribe's objective for tracking forest trends in Yurok carbon sequestration projects, while also detecting undesirable conifer encroachment on culturally-important prairies traditionally managed as open landscapes. Additionally, integration of community infrastructure data alongside satellite-derived drought, forest fire, and smoke density information via EVDT meets another Yurok Tribe objective of identifying negatively impacted Tribal areas for aid allocation. User feedback sessions with participating Yurok Tribe employees assess the prototype DSS and show 80% of users providing high ratings (≥75%) for information accuracy, relevancy, and sufficiency, demonstrating that our DSS development process overcomes previous gaps to DSS use and satellite data accessibility to augment Yurok Tribe forest management decision making. © 2023

The JuWaPfl software described here helps to estimate the expected time required and the costs of eight processes related to the maintenance of young forests. It can therefore support forest managers in planning forest interventions related to pruning, selective thinning, mowing around young trees, protection against browsing damage, measures to prevent snow gliding, creation of access trails, planning of skid trails, and planting. These processes belong to the so-called first stage of timber production and are important in ensuring that forests grow well until they are ready to be harvested and that the wood has the desired quality. The software is open-source and available free of charge in four languages, namely English, German, French, and Italian. It is written in Java and is platform-independent. © 2023 The Author(s)

Wildfire occurrences have increased and are projected to continue increasing globally. Strategic, evidence-based planning with diverse stakeholders, making use of diverse ecological and social data, is crucial for confronting and mitigating the associated risks. Prescribed fire, when planned and executed carefully, is a key management tool in this effort. Assessing where prescribed fire can be a particularly effective forest management tool can help prioritize efforts, reduce wildfire risk, and support fire-resilient lands and communities. We collaborated with expert stakeholders to develop a Bayesian network model that integrated a large variety of biophysical, socioecological, and socioeconomic spatial information for the Southeastern United States to quantify where risk is high and where prescribed fire would be efficient in mitigating risk. The model first estimated wildfire risk based on landscape-scale interactions among the likelihoods of fire occurrence and severity and the people and resources potentially exposed—accounting for socioeconomic vulnerabilities as well as key ecosystem services. The model then quantified the potential for risk reduction through prescribed fire, given the existing fuel load, climate, and other landscape conditions. The resulting expected risk estimates show high risk concentrated in the coastal plain and interior highland subregions of the Southern US, but there was considerable variation among risks to different ecosystem services and populations, including potential exposure to smoke emissions. The capacity to reduce risk through fuel reductions was spatially correlated with risk; where these diverged, the difference was largely explained by fuel load. We suggest that both risk and the capacity for risk reduction are important in identifying priorities for management interventions. The model serves as a decision support tool for stakeholders to coordinate large-landscape adaptive management initiatives in the Southern US. The model is flexible with regard to both empirical and expert-driven parameterizations and can be updated as new knowledge and data emerge. The resulting spatial information can help connect active management options to forest management goals and make management more efficient through targeted investments in priority landscapes. © 2023 by the authors.

One of the most important obstacles for taking advantage of forest resources in the Italian Alps is represented by the high level of private properties frag-mentation and by their small size. Thus, there is an urgent need for tools to support single or multi-forest owners to gain reliable and updated information on their forest stands so that the proper silvicultural activities following all the existing regulations can be adopted. The present research was aimed at promoting a shared management of small private forest properties in the moun-tainous area of Friuli Venezia Giulia (NE Italy) through the implementation of a new WebGIS tool to support forest decisions and management at different spatial scales. This new tool was developed updating and merging together different available information sources (e.g., tree species composition, the pres-ence of protected areas, forest roads, etc.) with ad-hoc elaborated layers (e.g., standing volume, annual increment of volume, forest accessibility, etc.), also elaborating a cost analysis related to the different possible harvesting methods. The tool allows queries at the level of either a single or a group of cadastral parcels to obtain data in a format, which can be used for filling in the planning document requested by the regional authorities. © SISEF.

Management of forest lands considering multi-functional approaches is the basis to sustain or enhance the provision of specific benefits, while minimizing negative impacts to the environment. Defining a desired management itinerary to a forest depends on a variety of factors, including the forest type, its ecological characteristics, and the social and economic needs of local communities. A strategic assessment of the forest use suitability (FUS) (namely productive, protective, conservation-oriented, social and multi-functional) at regional level, based on the provision of forest ecosystem services and trade-offs between FUS alternatives, can be used to develop management strategies that are tailored to the specific needs and conditions of the forest. The present study assesses the provision of multiple forest ecosystem services and employs a decision model to identify the FUS that supports the most present and productive ecosystem services in each stand in Catalonia. For this purpose, we apply the latest version of the Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) system, a spatially oriented decision support system that provides accurate results for multi-criteria management. We evaluate 32 metrics and 12 associated ecosystem services indicators to represent the spatial reality of the region. According to the results, the dominant primary use suitability is social, followed by protective and productive. Nevertheless, final assignment of uses is not straightforward and requires an exhaustive analysis of trade-offs between all alternative options, in many cases identifying flexible outcomes, and increasing the representativeness of multi-functional use. The assignment of forest use suitability aims to significantly improve the definition of the most adequate management strategy to be applied. © 2023

The large-scale use of best land management practices has been instrumental in the accession of recent regreening in certain Sahelian areas. This study therefore aimed at highlighting the effect of the wide use of these practices on the structural and ecological parameters of the woody flora in agroforestry parklands. To this end, an inventory of ligneous vegetation was carried out on radial transects in an East–West and North–South direction in the villages clusters of Dan Saga and Tabofatt in Niger Republic. A variance comparison test was applied on the values from plots with practice compare to those from plots without practice (controls). In Dan Saga site, the results obtained show the significant effect of the practice of assisted natural tree regeneration on the density of trees (97 against 58 plants/ha for the control plots), on the basal area (3.04 against 1.98 m2/ha for the control plots), on regeneration (61.96% against 40.91% for the controls) and on floristic diversity (2.93 against 2.41 bits for the control plots) with a clear dominance of Combretaceae. On the other hand, this effect is relatively less significant in the case of Tabofatt site’s where the practice of planting trees coupled with water and runoff collection structures induced positive effect particularly on the basal area (2.29 against 1.90 m2/ha for plots controls), on the structure of the vegetation stood by the abundance of plants with average diameter (class from 5 to 10 cm) as well as the species diversity (2.54 against 2.18 bits for the controls) with a dominance of species of the Mimosaceae family. These results can be used as decision support tools to guide actions to scale up regreening in the Sahelian context. © 2023, The Author(s).

In order to ensure the effective analysis and reconstruction of forests, it is key to ensure the quantitative description of their spatial structure. In this paper, a distance model for the optimal stand spatial structure based on weighted Voronoi diagrams is proposed. In particular, we provide a novel methodological model for the comprehensive evaluation of the spatial structure of forest stands in natural mixed conifer-broadleaved forests and the formulation of management decision plans. The applicability of the rank evaluation and the optimal solution distance model are compared and assessed for different standard sample plots of natural mixed conifer-broadleaved forests. The effect of crown width on the spatial structure unit of the trees is observed to be higher than that of the diameter at breast height. Moreover, the influence of crown length is greater than that of tree height. There are nine possible spatial structure units determined by the weighted Voronoi diagram for the number of neighboring trees in the central tree, with an average intersection of neighboring crowns reaching 80%. The rank rating of natural forest sample plots is correlated with the optimal solution distance model, and their results are generally consistent for natural forests. However, the rank rating is not able to provide a quantitative assessment. The optimal solution distance model is observed to be more comprehensive than traditional methods for the evaluation of the spatial structure of forest stands. It can effectively reflect the trends in realistic stand spatial structure factors close to or far from the ideal structure point, and accurately assesses the forest spatial structure. The proposed optimal solution distance model improves the integrated evaluation of the spatial structure of forest stands and provides solid theoretical and technical support for sustainable forest management. © 2023, The Author(s).

Forests and forestry-related industries and ecosystem services play a critical role in the daily life of all societies, including in cultural, ecological, social, economic, and environmental aspects. Globally, there are about 4.1 billion hectares of forestland. In the United States, there are about 304 million hectares of forestland, covering about 34% of the total land area, and the forest product industry produces over USD 200 billion worth of forestry products annually. Evidence suggests these precious resources may be negatively impacted by climate change via direct and indirect processes, including wildfires, insect/pest pressure, drought, extreme storm events, increased air temperature, solar radiation, vapor pressure deficit, and other factors and variables that can be detrimental. All these can not only cause significant changes in the health and productivity of the forests, but can also cause the extinction, migration, and/or re-distribution of different tree species. Thus, humankind has the paramount responsibility to take policy, technologic, economic, environmental, and management decisions and actions to protect this vital resource for current and future generations, plants, and animals. This paper provides an overview of some of the important characteristics of forest environmental services, climate–environment–forest interactions with respect to forest health and productivity, climate change’s impacts on forest species, and the utilization of forest biomass for high-value products. © 2023 by the authors.

This paper presents some of the decision support tools (DST) relevant for Swiss forestry. These are either a decision support system (DSS) or a management support tool (MST). The main purpose of a DSS is to provide computerised support for complex decision-making situations without the system making the decisions. MST are tools that support management activities away from decision-making. We elaborate on the characteristics needed to successfully establish such systems in operational use in forest practice. © 2023, Schweizerischer Forstverein. All rights reserved.