Methods: We used early land survey records (1846–1949) of public lands to reconstruct pre-settlement forest composition. The data consist of ranked tree species enumerations at points or for segments along surveyed lines, with enumerations of forest cover types and notes concerning disturbances. An original procedure was developed to weigh and combine these differing data types (line versus poi...

Edge effects are caused by the penetration of abiotic and biotic conditions from the matrix into forest interiors. Although edge effects influence the biogeography of many tropical organisms, they have not been studied directly in primates. Edge effects are particularly relevant to lemurs due to the loss of 80-90% of forests in Madagascar. In this study, data are presented on how biotic edge ef...

Doctor Ingeniero de Montes, ICONA Forest Fire Section, Madrid Spain. Abstract: Forest fuels in the Mediterranean ecosystems of Spain are characterized by generalized pyrophytism and large accumulations of woody shrub vegetation. The Forest Service prepared in 1978 a fuel management plan and a program of surveys including: A study on the vegetation's evolution in forests after fires; the experim...

This paper investigates the potential of laser scanning data to model forest 3d structure and its spatial pattern. Most of the existing methods for assessing structures in mountain forests are either inventory methods, which cannot be used for spatial assessments over large areas, or methods aimed only at assessing actual wood production. Several new landscape metrics are developed and applied ...

Assessing the species diversity of an urban forest is important for understanding its structure and functions, but the result can be affected by sampling methods, times, and delimitations of the study area. In this study, we examined the influence of different ways to delimit boundaries of urban areas on the assessment of species diversity of urban forests through a case study conducted in Haik...

Herpetologists and conservation biologists frequently use convenient and cost-effective, but less accurate, abundance indices (e.g., number of individuals collected under artificial cover boards or during natural objects surveys) in lieu of more accurate, but costly and destructive, population size estimators to detect and monitor size, state, and trends of amphibian populations. Although there...

In 1987, the Canadian Wildlife Service (Ontario Region) initiated a program to inventory and monitor trends in forest birds. The Forest Bird Monitoring Program (FBMP) was designed to describe changes in numbers over time for all forest songbirds, to develop a habitat-specific baseline inventory of forest birds (species composition and relative abundance), and to develop regionally accurate habi...

Field surveys and radiocarbon dating of buried logjams in the floodplain of an old-growth forest river demonstrate the formation of erosionresistant ‘‘hard points’’ on the floodplain of the Queets River, Washington. These hard points provide refugia for development of old-growth forest patches in frequently disturbed riparian environments dominated by immature forest. Our surveys show that loca...

In the Brazilian Amazon, private land accounts for the majority of remaining native vegetation. Understanding how land-use change affects the composition and distribution of biodiversity in farmlands is critical for improving conservation strategies in the face of rapid agricultural expansion. Working across an area exceeding 3 million ha in the southwestern state of Rondônia, we assessed how t...