Decision making for forest ecosystem management can include the use of a wide variety of modeling tools. These tools include vegetation growth models, wildlife models, silvicultural models, GIS, and visualization tools. NED-2 is a robust, intelligent, goal-driven decision support system that integrates tools in each of these categories. NED-2 uses a blackboard architecture and a set of semi-aut...

Fire is a dominant process in boreal forest landscapes and creates a spatial patch mosaic with different burn severities and age classes. Quantifying effects of vegetation and topography on burn severity provides a scientific basis on which forest fire management plans are developed to reduce catastrophic fires. However, the relative contribution of vegetation and topography to burn severity is...

To improve access, interpretability, and use of the full body of research, a pilot project was initiated by the USDA Forest Service to synthesize relevant scientific information and develop publications and decision support tools that managers can use to inform fuels treatment plans. This article provides an overview of the work of the Social Science Core Team. Team members synthesized social s...

Countries at the United Nations Framework on the Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have decided to engage local communities and indigenous groups into the activities for the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of the program to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and increase carbon removals (REDD+). Previous research and projects have shown that communities ...

CONTEXT Due to a long history of intensive forest exploitation, few European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) old-growth forests have been preserved in Europe. MATERIAL AND METHODS We studied two beech forest reserves in southern Slovenia. We examined the structural characteristics of the two forest reserves based on data from sample plots and complete inventory obtained from four previous forest m...

Increasing interest in non-timber forest products (NTFPs) has led to their greater recognition in sustainable forest management planning. This is evident in local resource management plans for the Robson Valley in east-central British Columbia, where public input shows strong support for the sustainable development of NTFP harvesting. However, information needed to develop sustainable managemen...

In this article we describe and evaluate a public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) methodology for use in national forest planning in the United States. The Internet-based mapping method collects public landscape values and special places data for input into a national forest planning decision support system. The PPGIS method presupposes that, within their existing statutory...

regeneration and forest durability guarantee is one of the most important aspects of forest sustainability and it should be placed in forest plans priority. to compare regeneration in the two grazed and non-grazed forest, baghe-shady forest located in khatam city (it has the preservative regions that they are 20 years old), yazd province, central of iran was selected. for this purpose, 60 sampl...