This final jobs goal- to study facilities on developing processes, using innovative technologies in forest management projects preparation, coordination, approval and implementation monitoring. Final job tasks: • To analyze and summarize the private forest management project preparations and implementations standards and the current situation; • Perform semiotic study of conventional signs used in forest management projects; • To prepare private forest management project using newly created database and technology. Final job analyzes and summarizes private forest management project preparations and implementations standards and the current situation. More than 92% forest management projects in Anykščiai district were approved from 2010 to 2016 30 April. Semiotic study of conventional signs used in forest management projects was accomplished. A review of devices used in the forest management project preparation was made. Private forest management project was prepared using newly created database and technology. Forest domain was measured by static method with GNNS Trimble R10. Plan is drawn with program QGIS. Inventory cards filled in a newly created Forest Information System www.eforest.lt.

The North-east German Lowlands is a region with one of the highest forest fire risks in Europe. In order to keep damage levels as low as possible, it is important to have an effective early warning system. Such a system is being developed on the basis of a hydrogen sensor, which makes it possible to detect a smouldering forest fire before the development of open flames. The prototype hydrogen sensor produced at the Humboldt University Berlin has a metal/ solid electrolyte/insulator/ semiconductor (MEIS) structure, which allows cost-effective production. Due to the low energy consumption, an autarchic working unit could be installed in the forest. Field trials have shown that it is possible to identify a forest fire in its early stages when hydrogen concentrations are still low. A significant change in the signal due to a fire was measured at a distance of about 100m. In view of the potential impacts of climate change, the innovative pre-ignition warning system is an important early diagnosis and monitoring module for the protection of the forests.

The semiarid Chaco plains present one of the highest rates of forest clearing and agricultural expansion of the world. In other semiarid plains, such massive vegetation replacements initiated a groundwater recharge and salt mobilization process that, after decades, raised regional water tables and salts to the surface, degrading agricultural and natural ecosystems. Indirect evidence suggests that this process (known as dryland salinity) began in the Chaco plains. Multiple approaches (deep soil profiles, geoelectric surveys and monitoring of groundwater salinity, level and isotopic composition) were combined to assess the dryland salinity status in one of the oldest and most active agricultural hotspots of the region, where isolated forest remnants occupy an extremely flat cultivated matrix. Full vadose moisture and chloride profiles from paired agriculture‐forest stands (17 profiles, six sites) revealed the following: a generalized onset of deep drainage with cultivation (32 to >87 mm year⁻¹), full leaching of native chloride pools (13.7 ± 2.5 kg m⁻²) down to the water table after >40 years following clearing and differential groundwater table rises (0.7 to 2 m shallower water tables under agriculture than under neighbouring forests). Continuous level monitoring showed abrupt water table rises under annual crops (up to 2.6 m in 15 days) not seen under forests or pastures. Varying deep drainage rates and groundwater isotopic composition under agricultural plots suggest that these pulses are strongly modulated by crop choices and sequences. In contrast to other dryland salinity‐affected areas of the world, forest remnants in the study area (10–20% of the area) are not only surviving the observed hydrological shifts but also sustaining active salty groundwater transpirative discharge, as evidenced by continuous water table records. The overall impact of these forest remnants on lowering neighbouring water tables would be limited by the low hydraulic conductivity of the sediments. As highly cultivated areas of the Chaco evolve to new hydrological conditions of shallower saline water tables, innovative crop rotations that minimize recharge, enhance transpirative discharge and tolerate salinity will be needed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Ghana is the focus of extensive economic development interest, and is undergoing a substantial increase in population from 5 million in 1950 to an estimated 50 million in 2050. Population growth is impacting the natural environment, mostly through land cover and land use change (LCLUC), and particularly associated with agriculture expansion and urbanization. Monitoring LCLUC is necessary in order to understand the overall dynamics of population, LCLU and quality of life. However, extensive cloud cover in the region complicates satellite-based monitoring of LCLUC. Our objectives are to evaluate an innovative “dense stack” approach to image classification with extremely cloudy, multi-temporal Landsat 7 ETM+ imagery, map and quantify LCLU within southern Ghana for circa 2000 and circa 2010, examine LCLU changes, and assess the utility of the approach for monitoring human-induced change. Maximum value composite images (derived from the dense stacks) provide unique information for classifying the LCLU classes of interest, and accuracy assessment results indicate effective overall classification of the six LCLU classes mapped using semi-automated methods. A product we developed and refer to as the spectral variability vegetation index (SVVI) plays a major role in discriminating three natural vegetation classes and agriculture. Derived circa 2000 and circa 2010 LCLU maps indicate that approximately 26% of the study area exhibited LCLU change during the study period. Sixty-two percent (62%) of the changes are associated with conversion to Agriculture, with 33% from Secondary Forest, 26% from Savanna, and 3% from Forest. During the same period, 18% of circa 2000 land classified as Agriculture was fallow or abandoned by circa 2010. Change to Built represented 6% of the LCLU change, which includes 5% from Agriculture and 1% from Secondary Forest circa 2000. Freely available Landsat 7 ETM+ imagery and the time-series classification methods developed here may be used to further monitor LCLU change in the region and throughout the world, particularly in cloud-prone equatorial areas.

Food forestry has grown in its popularity in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, which it has not been traditionally practiced before, for its potential to produce healthy food, to create habitat for wildlife species, to reconnect people with nature and to provide various ecosystem services such as carbon storage. Diverse food forest projects are conceived from urban food initiatives to integrated conservation and restoration planning. Currently, the Galiano Conservancy Association is creating two food forests in the heart of a mature Coastal Douglas-fir landscape on Galiano Island, British Columbia, which is protected under a conservation covenant, in pursuit of sustainable food production, education and contribution to ecological restoration and conservation efforts. To investigate the relationships between emerging food forestry and ecological restoration and to identify key indicators to measure best practices of food forestry in the context of ecological restoration, I conducted 16 semi-structured interviews with food forestry and ecological restoration experts. In addition, I conducted a workshop with the Conservancy stakeholders to develop a comprehensive and systematic monitoring framework for their food forest projects. My studies suggest that restoration principles and resilience thinking can provide guidelines for restorative food forestry. Food forestry may serve as an innovative restoration tool to restore urban landscapes where lack significant opportunities for conventional restoration. A generic monitoring framework for food forestry could be adapted by other projects, yet this will require the process of defining goals and objectives of a given project and assessing landscape contexts and the organization’s capacity to monitor. | Graduate | soph.park@yahoo.ca

A sustainable management of natural resources, in particular of forests, is of great importance to preserve the ecological, environmental and economic benefits of forests for future generations. An enhanced understanding of the current situation and ongoing trends of forests, e.g. through policy interventions, is crucial to managing the forest wisely. In this context, forest monitoring is essential for collecting the base data required and for observing trends. Despite the wide range of approved methods and techniques for both close-range and satellite-based remote sensing monitoring, ongoing forest monitoring research is still grappling with specific and unresolved questions: The data acquired must be more reliable, in particular over a long-term period; costs need to be reduced through advancements in both methods and technology that offer easier and more feasible ways of interpreting data. This thesis comprises a number of focused studies, each with their individual and specific research questions, and aims to explore the benefits of innovative methods and technologies. The main emphasis of the studies presented is the integration of close-range and satellite-based remote sensing for enhancing the efficiency of forest monitoring. Manuscript I discusses thermal canopy photography, a new field of application. This approach takes advantage of the large differences in temperature between sky and non-sky pixels and overcomes the inconsistencies of finding an optimal threshold. For an unambiguously separation of “sky” and “non-sky” pixels, a global threshold of 0 °C was defined. Currently, optical or hemispherical canopy photography is the most widely used method to extract crown-related variables. However, a number of aspects, such as exposure, illumination conditions, and threshold definition present a challenge in optical canopy photography and dramatically influence the result; consequently, a comparison of the results from optical canopy photography at a different point in time derived is not advisable. For forest monitoring, where repeated measurements of the canopy cover on the same plots were undertaken, it is therefore of utmost importance to devise a standard protocol to estimate changes in and compare the canopy covers. This paper offers such a protocol by introducing thermal canopy photography. A feasible and accurate method that examines the strong correlation (R2 = 0.96) of canopy closure values derived from thermal and optical image pairs. Thermal photography, as a close-range remote sensing technique, also aids data collection and analysis in other contexts, for instance to expand our knowledge about bamboo tree species: Information about the maturity of bamboo culms is of utmost importance for managing bamboo stands because only then the process of lignification is finished and the culm is technically stronger and more resistant to insect and fungi attacks. The findings of a study (Manuscript III) conducted in Pereira, Colombia, show small differences in culm surface temperature between culms of different ages for the bamboo species Guadua angustifolia K., which may be a sign of maturity. The surface temperature of 12 culms was measured after sunrise using the thermal camera system FLIR 60Ebx. This study shows an innovative close-range remote sensing technique which may support researchers’ determination of the maturity of bamboo culms. This research is in its inception phase and our results are the first of this kind. In the context of analyzing, in particular of thermal imagery time-series data, Manuscript (IV) offers a new methodology using advanced statistical methods. Otsu Thresholding, an automatic segmentation technique is used in a first processing step. O’Sullivan penalized splines estimated the temperature profile extracted from the canopy leaf temperature. A final comparison of the different profiles is done by constructing simultaneous confidence bands. The result shows an approximately significant difference in canopy leaf temperature. For this study, we successfully cooperated with the Center for Statistics at Göttingen University (Prof. Kneib). The second close-range remote sensing technology employed in this thesis is terrestrial laser scanning which is used here to enhance our understanding about buttressed trees. Big trees with an irregular non-convex shape are important contributors to aboveground biomass in tropical forests, but an accurate estimation of their biomass is still a challenge and often remains biased. Allometric equations including tree diameter and height as predictors are currently used in tropical forests, but they are often not calibrated for such large and irregular trees where measuring the diameter is quite difficult. Against this background, Manuscript II shows the result of the 3D-analysis of 12 buttressed trees. This study was conducted in the Botanical Garden of Bogor, Indonesia, using a state-of-the-art terrestrial laser scanner. The findings allow for new insights into the irregular geometry of buttressed trees and the methodological approach employed in this paper will help to improve volume and biomass models for this kind of tree. The results suggest a strong relationship (R² = 0.87) between cross-sectional areas at diameter above buttress (DAB) height and the actual tree basal area measured at 1.3 m height. The accuracy of field biomass estimates is crucial if the data are used to calibrate models to predict the forest biomass on landscape level using remote sensing imagery. The linkage between technology and methodology in the context of forest monitoring remote sensing enhance our knowledge in extracting more reliable information on tree cover estimation. The pre-processing of satellite images plays a crucial role in the processing workflow and particularly the illumination correction has a direct effect on the estimated tree cover. Manuscript IV evaluates four DEMs (Pleiades DSM, SRTM30, SRTM V4.1 and SRTM-X) that are available for the area of Shitai County (Anhui Province, Southeast China) for the purpose of an optimized illumination correction and tree cover estimation from optical RapidEye satellite images. The findings presented in this study suggest that the change in tree cover is contingent on the respective digital elevation models used for pre-processing the data. Imagery corrected with the freely available SRTM30 DEM with 30 m resolution leads to a higher accuracy in the estimation of tree cover based on the high-resolution and cost intensive Pleaides DEM. These manuscripts eventually seek to resolve some of the issues and provide answers to some of the detailed questions that still persist at different steps of the forest monitoring process. In future, these new and innovate methods and technologies will maybe integrate into forest monitoring programs.

Following an intense occupation process that was initiated in the 1960s, deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon have decreased significantly since 2004, stabilizing around 6000 km² yr⁻¹ in the last 5 years. A convergence of conditions contributed to this, including the creation of protected areas, the use of effective monitoring systems, and credit restriction mechanisms. Nevertheless, other threats remain, including the rapidly expanding global markets for agricultural commodities, large‐scale transportation and energy infrastructure projects, and weak institutions. We propose three updated qualitative and quantitative land‐use scenarios for the Brazilian Amazon, including a normative ‘Sustainability’ scenario in which we envision major socio‐economic, institutional, and environmental achievements in the region. We developed an innovative spatially explicit modelling approach capable of representing alternative pathways of the clear‐cut deforestation, secondary vegetation dynamics, and the old‐growth forest degradation. We use the computational models to estimate net deforestation‐driven carbon emissions for the different scenarios. The region would become a sink of carbon after 2020 in a scenario of residual deforestation (~1000 km² yr⁻¹) and a change in the current dynamics of the secondary vegetation – in a forest transition scenario. However, our results also show that the continuation of the current situation of relatively low deforestation rates and short life cycle of the secondary vegetation would maintain the region as a source of CO₂ – even if a large portion of the deforested area is covered by secondary vegetation. In relation to the old‐growth forest degradation process, we estimated average gross emission corresponding to 47% of the clear‐cut deforestation from 2007 to 2013 (using the DEGRAD system data), although the aggregate effects of the postdisturbance regeneration can partially offset these emissions. Both processes (secondary vegetation and forest degradation) need to be better understood as they potentially will play a decisive role in the future regional carbon balance.

This paper describes a detailed study of stump harvesting in Lamloch Forest in north Dumfries and Galloway from 2010 to 2014. The study explored both the nature and extent of soil disturbance resulting from stump harvesting using a variety of standard and innovative techniques. Stump harvesting disturbance was compared with that of other forestry practices. To complement the two-dimensional and subjective nature of visual assessment techniques, a radiometric approach was adopted, utilising residual Chernobyl 137Cs fallout to determine the degree of soil mixing. To support bulk density measurements, micromorphological analyses of soil thin sections were carried out to investigate the impact of compressive force on pore space. Low-cost tracer devices were deployed in the soil around stumps prior to extraction to permit the monitoring of soil lateral movement during stump extraction.  The study showed that stump harvesting followed by restock, when carried out under current guidelines, disturbed around five times the volume of soil compared to that disturbed by trench mounding. Stump harvesting also resulted in a net reduction in soil bulk density. Suggestions for modification of stump harvesting operations are made to reduce soil disturbance, including avoiding raking over the site following stump harvesting which is estimated to add a further 10% to the volume of soil disturbed.