Recent Amazonian droughts have drawn attention to the vulnerability of tropical forests to climate perturbations. Satellite and in situ observations have shown an increase in fire occurrence during drought years and tree mortality following severe droughts, but to date there has been no assessment of long-term impacts of these droughts across landscapes in Amazonia. Here, we use satellite micro...

1 We used isozyme variation to examine the genet structure of Uvularia perfoliata patches in gap and closed canopy habitats in a temperate deciduous forest in Maryland, USA. 2 A large patch in a gap habitat was composed of a small number of widely spread genets with many ramets, and a large number of genets with more restricted distribution and few ramets. Genets with many ramets were patchily ...

Accurate estimates of the total biomass in terrestrial vegetation are important for carbon dynamics studies at a variety of scales. Although aboveground biomass is difficult to quantify over large areas using traditional techniques, lidar remote sensing holds great promise for biomass estimation because it directly measures components of canopy structure such as canopy height and the vertical d...

Several decades of research have shown that canopy gaps drive tree renewal processes in the temperate deciduous forest biome. In the literature, canopy gaps are usually defined as canopy openings that are created by partial or total tree death of one or more canopy trees. In this study, we investigate linkages between tree damage mechanisms and the formation or not of new canopy gaps in norther...

The relative roles of a macroalgal canopy, Fucus serratus L., and a grazer, Patella vulgata L., in structuring a low shore community of a sheltered, rocky intertidal site were examined using a factorial experimental design. Canopy removal and grazer exclusion treatments were used to determine the effects of both factors on the understorey community. Re-establishment of the canopy was studied in...

Defoliation is a commonly used viticultural technique to balance the ratio between grapevine vegetation and fruit. Defoliation is conducted around the fruit zone to reduce the leaf photosynthetic area, and to increase sunlight exposure of grape bunches. Apical leaf removal is not commonly practiced, and therefore its influence on canopy structure and resultant wine aroma is not well-studied. Th...

A forest canopy is a complex system with a highly structural multi-scale architecture. Physical based radiative transfer (RT) modelling has been shown to be an effective tool for retrieval of vegetation canopy biochemical/physical characteristics from optical remote sensing data. A high spatial resolution RT through a forest canopy requires several geometrical and structural parameters of trees...

Canopy water content is a dynamic quantity that depends on the balance between water losses from transpiration and water uptake from the soil. Absorption of shortwave radiation by water is determined by various frequencies that match overtones of fundamental bending and stretching molecular transitions. Leaf water potential and relative water content are important variables for determining wate...