The potential differentiations in litter chemistry among native and non-native trees are poorly understood. We compared the chemical composition of leaf litterfall of 11 exotic tree species, e.g. coniferous: Abies cephalonica, A. grandis, A. procera, Chamaecyparis pisifera, Pinus peuce, Pseudotsuga menziesii, Thuja plicata, and deciduous: Acer rubrum, A. saccharum, Betula alleghaniensis and Que...

Coniferous tree canopies typically carry more leaf area than is necessary to intercept most of the incoming light. I postulated that an excessively large leaf area will reduce net productivity at tree level, unless the net photosynthetic production of the most shaded shoots in the canopy remains positive. The hypothesis tested was that a coniferous tree canopy maintains a large productive leaf ...

We directly observed roost and nest site selection in a population of northern spotted owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) in northwestern California during 1985-89. Because of potential biases caused by use of radio telemetry in previous studies, we examined habitat use relative to habitat availability at a level not previously reported for spotted owls. Spotted owls selected coniferous forest c...

The grey wolf has one of the largest historic distributions of any terrestrial mammal and can disperse over great distances across imposing topographic barriers. As a result, geographical distance and physical obstacles to dispersal may not be consequential factors in the evolutionary divergence of wolf populations. However, recent studies suggest ecological features can constrain gene flow. We...

The possibility for the extraction of spring phenological events of boreal evergreen forest from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) time-series was evaluated in this study. The beginning of the photosynthetically active period, determined from CO2 fluxes measured with the eddy covariance method, was used as primary reference for the onset of growing season (hereafter referred to a...

Forest ecosystems may provide strong sources of nitrous oxide (N2O), which is important for atmospheric chemical and radiative properties. Nonetheless, our understanding of controls on forest N2O emissions is insufficient to narrow current flux estimates, which still are associated with great uncertainties. In this study, we have investigated the quantitative and qualitative relationships betwe...

In this paper a supervised approach for the object building / segmentation process utilizing a priori knowledge about the specific scale domain of the target features is proposed. One premise was that the result should finally represent the entire scene content in a spatially contiguous one-level-representation (OLR, Lang & Langanke, 2006). High-level segmentation and pre-classification of mult...

The EU-CORINE Land Cover (CLC 2000) project for Sweden was carried out by the Swedish National Land Survey. The classification of forested land cover types, covering about 65% percent of the land area in Sweden, was contracted out to the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). The method of forest classification used detailed plot information from the National Forest Inventory (NFI),...

Fine root production is one of the key elements carbon (C) turnover in soil afforested peatlands and forest lands with organic soils. We estimated variability fine morphology traits annual hemiboreal forests dominated by coniferous trees (Norway spruce) deciduous (silver birch black alder) nutrient-rich soils Latvia. In total, 23 research sites were established drained naturally wet different a...

Albedo and fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR) determine the shortwave radiation balance and productivity of forests. Currently, the physical link between forest albedo and productivity is poorly understood, yet it is crucial for designing optimal forest management strategies for mitigating climate change. We investigated the relationships between boreal forest stru...