There is less published research on ecosystems of forested rangeland in Iran. This research was conducted to investigate the forested rangeland area based on legal definition via comparison of indices species richness, diversity, and morphology of the trees and shrubs in Sabzkouh watershed, Chaharmahal Bakhtiari province, Iran. Quantitative characteristics of trees and shrubs were measured by 5...

The Table Interpolation Program for Stand Yields (tipsy) enables forest managers and timber supply analysts to explore the impacts of variable retention. tipsy variable retention adjustment factors (vrafs) are calculated based on the level and pattern of both group and dispersed tree retention using four primary variables from the retained stand: percent crown cover, average group or crown size...

A GIS-based method for locating potential tree-planting sites based on land cover data is introduced. Criteria were developed to identify locations that are spatially available for potential tree planting based on land cover, sufficient distance from impervious surfaces, a minimum amount of pervious surface, and no crown overlap with other trees. In an ArcGIS environment, a computer program was...

The relationships between foliar weight/leaf area and four stem dimensions (dbh, total stem cross-sectional area, total sapwood area, and current sapwood area at breast height) were investigated in two important bottomland tree species of the southern United States, cherrybark oak (Quercus falcata var. pagodifolia EN.) and green ash (fraxinus pennsylvanica Marsh.). In all models tested and for ...

The paper studies crown reductions for the Minimum Weighted Vertex Cover problem introduced recently in the unweighted case by Fellows et al. ([20], [1]). We describe in detail a close relation of crown reductions to Nemhauser and Trotter reductions that are based on the linear programming relaxation of the problem. We introduce and study the so called strong crown reductions, suitable for find...

Reconstruction of a real tree from scattered scanned points is a new challenge in virtual reality. Although many progresses are made on main branch structures and overall shape of a tree, reconstructions are still not satisfactory in terms of silhouette and details. We do think that 3D reconstruction of the tree crown shapes may help to constrain accurate reconstruction of complete real tree ge...

China is investing immense resources for planting trees, totalling more than US$ 100 billion in the past decade alone. Every year, China reports more afforestation than the rest of the world combined. Here, we show that China's forest cover gains are highly definition-dependent. If the definition of 'forest' follows FAO criteria (including immature and temporarily unstocked areas), China has ga...

Human activities, particularly agriculture, have transformed much of the world's terrestrial environment. Within these anthropogenic landscapes, a variety of relictual and semi-natural habitats exist, which we term countryside elements. The habitat value of countryside elements (hereafter termed 'elements') is increasingly recognised. We quantify the relative value of four kinds of such 'elemen...