The present investigation of forest ecosystem was undertaken during May 2010 to Dec 2010. The main aim of the study was to analyze the impact of biotic interferences on Yousmarg forest ecosystem. The cumulative effect of the biotic interferences was signif icantly seen in the reduction of vegetation cover. The present study revealed that the prominent factor for the exploitation of the vegetati...

Schulz, Bethany K.; Bechtold, William A.; Zarnoch, Stanley J. 2009. Sampling and estimation procedures for the vegetation diversity and structure indicator. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-781. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 53 p. The Vegetation Diversity and Structure Indicator (VEG) is an extensive inventory of vascular plants in the ...

The dynamic relationship between vegetation and climate is now widely acknowledged. Climate influences the distribution of vegetation; and through a number of feedback mechanisms vegetation affects climate. This implies that land-use changes such as deforestation will have climatic consequences. However, the spatial scales at which such feedbacks occur remain largely unknown. Here, we use a lar...

31 32 A better understanding of the mechanisms controlling the magnitude and sign of carbon components in 33 tropical forest ecosystems is important for reliable estimation of this important regional component of the 34 global carbon cycle. We used the JULES vegetation model to simulate all components of the carbon balance 35 at six sites along an Andes-Amazon transect across Peru and Brazil an...

Opportunities to directly study infrequent forest disturbance events often lead to valuable information about vegetation dynamics. In mesic temperate forests of North America, stand-replacing crown fire occurs infrequently, with a return interval of 2000-3000 years. Rare chance events, however, may have profound impacts on the developmental trajectories of forest ecosystems. For example, it has...

The impacts of fragmentation and recreational use on the hemiboreal urban forest understorey vegetation and the microbial community of the humus layer (the phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) pattern, microbial biomass and microbial activity, measured as basal respiration) were examined in the greater Helsinki area, southern Finland. Trampling tolerance of 1) herb-rich OMT, 2) mesic MT, and 3) sub-x...

The natural forest ecosystem in Eastern China, from tropical forest to boreal forest, has declined due to cropland development during the last 300 years, yet little is known about the historical biogeographic patterns and driving processes for the major domains of microorganisms along this continental-scale natural vegetation gradient. We predicted the biogeographic patterns of soil archaeal, b...

The impact of large herbivores on ecosystems before modern human activities is an open question in ecology and conservation. For Europe, the controversial wood-pasture hypothesis posits that grazing by wild large herbivores supported a dynamic mosaic of vegetation structures at the landscape scale under temperate conditions before agriculture. The contrasting position suggests that European tem...

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing has great potential for vegetation mapping in complex urban landscapes due to the ultra-high resolution imagery acquired at low altitudes. Because of payload capacity restrictions, off-the-shelf digital cameras are widely used on medium and small sized UAVs. The limitation of low spectral resolution in digital cameras for vegetation mapping can be re...