Although noncrop woody plants in crop field landscapes serve multiple functions, the modernization of agriculture has threatened their preservation. In this study, isolated woody plants used as farmland boundary markers were investigated in Ibaraki Prefecture in the eastern Kanto region. A total of 2001 individuals of 50 species were found around 177 equidistantly spaced points. The most freque...

The role of livestock grazing in regulating woody cover and biomass in grass-dominant systems is well recognized. However, the way in which woody plant populations in respond when livestock are removed from grazing in the absence of other disturbances, such as fire, remains unclear.We conducted a 10-year, replicated fencing experiment in a sandy semiarid rangeland in northern China (which has a...

Woody plants are particularly difficult to investigate due to high phenolic, resin, and tannin contents and laborious sample preparation. In particular, protein isolation from woody plants for two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) is challenging as secondary metabolites negatively interfere with protein extraction and separation. In this study, three protein extraction protocols, using TCA...

Resprouting multi-stemmed woody plants form an important component of the woody vegetation in many ecosystems, but a clear methodology for reliable measurement of their size and quick, non-destructive estimation of their woody biomass and carbon stock is lacking. Our goal was to find a minimum number of sprouts, i.e., the most easily obtainable, and sprout parameters that should be measured for...

Land change in the Greater Antilles differs markedly among countries because of varying socioeconomic histories and global influences. We assessed land change between 2001 and 2010 in municipalities (second administrative units) of Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. Our analysis used annual land-use/land-cover maps derived from MODIS satellite imagery to model linear cha...

Woody detritus has become an important focus of many scientific and management questions in forests. Perspectives of the role of this part of the ecosystem have greatly changed over time. Today forest managers are moving away from a “blanket” removal of all the woody detritus possible to retaining and even enhancing the amounts in forests. To understand how much woody detritus is required to su...