Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Forest Sciences
Changes in soil moisture availability and water yield in response to longleaf pine restoration in southeast Texas
Published: 2026-04-16
Subjects: Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Our study, based in Trinity County, Texas, focused on whether strategic management of longleaf pine forest could promote a less water-intensive land cover type. We modeled soil evapotranspiration (ET) by measuring vertically stratified soil moisture (15-120 cm) across five forest monitoring sites, four of which received restoration treatments, and one served as a control. Forest attributes, [...]
No place to hide? Regional resilience and vulnerability to global catastrophic risk
Published: 2026-03-27
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Food Science, Forest Sciences, Geography, Public Health
What places on Earth are most resilient to global catastrophic risk (GCR)? We provide the first systematic study of what locations are more resilient to a range of catastrophic threats. We reviewed the literature on resilience factors against the impacts of nuclear war, near-Earth objects, large-magnitude volcanic eruptions, large-scale cyberattacks, high altitude electromagnetic pulse, [...]
Nationwide deadwood mapping reveals rising mountain forests vulnerability
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences
Forest mortality is increasing globally under climate change, making detailed, large-scale monitoring essential for understanding ecosystem responses and guiding adaptive forest management. Here, we present a spatio-temporal assessment of standing deadwood in Switzerland from 2018 to 2023, derived from centimeter-scale high-resolution aerial imagery. We reveal a consistent upslope concentration [...]
Misalignments between national mangrove monitoring capacities and climate policy ambitions
Published: 2025-12-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Ambitious global targets for mangrove conservation have advanced rapidly in recent years, yet the implementation of these commitments depends largely on national monitoring systems and policy processes. Despite widespread reliance on country-reported data for setting and evaluating targets, little is known about how national mangrove statistics are generated or how they interact with climate [...]
Temperate forest floors: Ecosystem hub in transition?
Published: 2025-12-04
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
The forest floor (FF) plays a key role in carbon, nutrient, and water cycling. It is the biologically most active compartment of forest soils, highly responsive to environmental conditions. Yet, its response on currently changing forests is understudied. Here we (1) compile existing knowledge on provision of ecosystem services by the FF, (2) evaluate its vulnerability to environmental change, and [...]
Recent climate change reduced Spanish forests' carbon sink capacity
Published: 2025-11-13
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
Forests play a crucial role as carbon sinks and are central to climate mitigation strategies, yet their long-term reliability in this function is increasingly uncertain under climate change. Using deep learning techniques on a multi-source dataset—combining multi-spectral satellite data, airborne laser scanning, and ground-based measurements—we produced the most up-to-date high-resolution maps of [...]
Spatiotemporal dynamics of air pollution and vegetation health in a rapidly urbanizing city in northeastern Bangladesh
Published: 2025-11-07
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Geography
Air pollution poses a significant environmental concern and is recognized as the fourth leading risk factor affecting human health. Understanding the levels of air pollution and its relationships with vegetation is crucial for assessing health risks under rapid urbanization. In this study, using the extracted imagery from the Sentinel-5 and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) [...]
Unexpected canopy gain in Earth’s mangrove forests linked to natural expansion and regrowth
Published: 2025-11-01
Subjects: Forest Sciences
Mangroves have disappeared rapidly due to deforestation and sea-level rise but can also recover through natural regrowth and restoration. However, their long-term trajectory in area and canopy cover remains highly uncertain. By developing a global mangrove canopy density dataset, we show that mangrove loss (conversion to other land uses) and degradation (reduction in canopy density) have been [...]
Global Alpine Treeline Elevational Transects
Published: 2025-10-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Forest Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The Alpine Treeline Ecotone (ATE) is an important ecological transition zone at the juncture of montane forests and alpine tundra. It serves as a crucial habitat for diverse species and a sensitive indicator of climate change. Consistent characterization of the elevational gradients of ATE is challenging due to complex topography and data limitations. This study introduces a comprehensive [...]
Insights from the Unseen - Occlusion in Forest Laser Scanning
Published: 2025-09-24
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Forest Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Laser scanning is a powerful tool for assessing the structural complexity of forests and its role in ecosystem processes and functioning. Laser scans are however highly affected by occlusion (where objects block laser pulses), resulting in data gaps within the 3D representation of the forest. Although occlusion is a well-known and frequently discussed challenge for estimating forest structural [...]
Beyond the mangroves: a global synthesis of tidal forested wetland types, drivers and future information opportunities
Published: 2025-09-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
There is increasing awareness of the global diversity of tidal forested wetlands (TFWs) and their significance in the provision of ecosystem services. These ecosystems, including mangrove forests, tidal freshwater forested wetlands, supratidal forests and transitional forests together span multiple climatic zones, geomorphic settings, and inundation and salinity regimes. We utilise case studies [...]
The Global Woody Surface: A Planetary Interface for Biodiversity, Ecosystem Function, and Climate
Published: 2025-08-07
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation
Global woody surfaces span an area nearly equivalent to Earth’s terrestrial land surface and mediate CO2 fluxes three times larger than global fossil fuel emissions and methane uptake comparable to the global soil sink, yet remain absent from ecological research and Earth system models despite their critical roles in biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Bridging Ancestral Knowledge and Ecosystem Science for Coastal Restoration in Latin America
Published: 2025-08-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Systems Biology
Peer-review status: This manuscript has not been peer-reviewed. It is a preprint submitted for public dissemination and open feedback. This study documents the CALISUR methodology, a community-based mangrove restoration model rooted in ancestral ecological knowledge and applied across six intervention sites in the Gulf of Guayaquil. The methodology integrates scientific and traditional practices [...]
Validation Challenges in Large-Scale Tree Crown Segmentations from Remote Sensing Imagery Using Deep Learning: A Case Study in Germany
Published: 2025-07-25
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Forest Sciences
Deep-learning–based individual tree-crown (ITC) mapping has become increasingly prominent in remote sensing, yet rigorous validation of these predictions at large spatial scales remains challenging. Using data from an extensive case study involving the mapping of approximately 218.7 million trees across the German federal states of Sachsen and Sachsen-Anhalt from multispectral aerial imagery, [...]
The air pollution benefits of low severity fire
Published: 2025-07-02
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Remote Sensing
Larger and more frequent wildfire events in Western North America in recent years have resulted in extensive human and environmental damage, and are reversing decades of air quality improvements. Fuels treatments, including the use of prescribed fire, can reduce the extent and severity of future wildfires, but air quality trade-offs resulting from application of these treatments -- more initial [...]