Process-based forest ecosystem models vary from simple physiological, complex physiological, to hybrid empirical-physiological models. Previous studies indicate that complex models provide the best prediction at plot scale with a temporal extent of less than 10 years, however, it is largely untested as to whether complex models outperform the other two types of models at plot and regional scale...

Recent issues of this journal have presented an interesting debate regarding forest fires in Galicia, Spain. This article proposes a forest-energy programme that will contribute to reducing the risk of forest fires in this Atlantic Region of Southern Europe. We apply the contingent valuation method to assess a programme whereby 10% of the electricity produced from coal, fuel oil and gas would b...

©1999–2004 CHOICES. All rights reserved. Articles may be reproduced or electronically distributed as long as attribution to Choices and the American Agricultural Economics Association is maintained. Choices subscriptions are free and can be obtained through http://www.choicesmagazine.org. Carbon sequestration has attracted the interest of researchers, energy industry participants, policy makers...

Long-term effects of policies to induce carbon storage in forests were projected with the Global Forest Products Model. Offset payments for carbon sequestered in forest biomass of $15–$50/t CO2e applied in all countries increased CO2 sequestration in world forests by 5–14 billion tons from 2009 to 2030. Limiting implementation to developed countries exported environmental damage from North to S...

This paper uses a multi-proxy approach involving pollen, plant macrofossils, speleothem isotopes, and alluvial history of streams to reconstruct the history of prairie expansion and contraction along the prairie-forest border of southeastern Minnesota, USA. Early Holocene forests were replaced by prairie along this border, but eastward expansion of prairie stalled for 2000 yr when the prairie-f...

Summertime nitric acid concentrations over a deciduous forest in the midwestern United States are reported, which range between 0.36 and 3.3 mgm . Fluxes to the forest are computed using the relaxed eddy accumulation technique and gradient methods. In accord with previous studies, the results indicate substantial uncertainties in the gradientbased calculations. The relaxed eddy accumulation (RE...

Institutional mapping is a technique that builds on the logic of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In GIS, coverages placed over a base map show spatial relations. Social institutions are more difficult to ‘‘map’’ physically. Institutional mapping uses three social coverages—scale, power, and capital. Four sets of institutions affecting watershed management—salmon restoration, water quality...

Within forest growth modeling LOGIT models are used to predict individual tree mortality. In this paper we present, Multi-Layer Perceptron, Learning Vector Quantization and Cascade Correlation networks as different formalisms for mortality predictions. The data set for parameterizing the LOGIT model and training the different neural network types comes from the Austrian National Forest Inventor...

Deforestation due to ever-increasing activities of the growing human population has been an issue of major concern for the global environment. It has been especially serious in the last several decades in the developing countries. A population-deforestation model has been developed by the authors to relate the population density with the cumulative forest loss, which is defined and computed as ...

Participatory approaches to development in general and natural resource management in particular are now a widely accepted management strategy. Multi-agent system (MAS), a computer-based tool, offers a promising approach for multistakeholder management systems such as the case involving community-managed resources. MAS provides a framework where stakeholders’ (or agents) individual actions, beh...