Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Forest Sciences
The carbon cycle of southeast Australia during 2019-2020: Drought, fires and subsequent recovery
Published: 2021-05-13
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
2019 was the hottest and driest year on record for southeast Australia leading to bushfires of unprecedented extent. Ecosystem carbon losses due to drought and fire are believed to have been substantial, but have not been well quantified. Here, we utilize space-based measurements of trace gases (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument XCO, Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 XCO2) and up-scaled GPP (FluxSat [...]
Impacts of a regional multi-year insect defoliation event on seasonal runoff ratios and instantaneous streamflow characteristics
Published: 2020-10-26
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Hydrology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management
Repeated moderate severity forest disturbances can cause short- and long-term shifts in ecosystem processes. Prior work has found that stand-replacing disturbances (e.g., clear-cutting) increases streamflow in temperate forests, but streamflow responses to repeated moderate severity disturbances are more equivocal. This study examined a moderate disturbance caused by an unexpected population [...]
Transitioning Machine Learning from Theory to Practice in Natural Resources Management
Published: 2020-10-22
Subjects: Agriculture, Computer Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Advances in sensing and computation have accelerated at unprecedented rates and scales, in turn creating new opportunities for natural resources managers to improve adaptive and predictive management practices by coupling large environmental datasets with machine learning (ML). Yet, to date, ML models often remain inaccessible to managers working outside of academic research. To identify [...]
Range-based intensity normalization of ALS data over forested areas using a sensor tracking method from multiple returns
Published: 2020-07-10
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Airborne laser scanning (ALS) point-clouds are used in forest inventory to map properties of the resource. In most cases, only the (x,y,z) coordinates of the point cloud are used to build predictive models of forest structure. Despite being recorded and provided by data suppliers, the intensity values associated with each point are rarely used as an input to such models because raw intensity [...]
Probabilistic soil moisture dynamics of water- and energy-limited ecosystems
Published: 2020-05-17
Subjects: Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
This paper presents an extension of the stochastic ecohydrological model for soil moisture dynamics at a point of Rodriguez-Iturbe et al. (1999) and Laio et al. (2001). In the original model, evapotranspiration is a function of soil moisture and vegetation parameters, so that the model is suitable for water-limited environments. Our extension introduces a dependence on maximum evapotranspiration [...]
Concepts of space, time and scale
Published: 2020-04-11
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Concepts of space, time and scale as well as their underpinning theories are crucial for understanding geospatial data. Space can be defined as a boundless, three-dimensional (3D) extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Space has been considered to be absolute, meaning that it exists permanently and independently regardless of any matter in space. [...]
Fundamental laws and principles in geoinformation science
Published: 2020-04-11
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Scientific laws are empirical statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. There are scientific laws and law-like statements also in the field of geoinformation sciences. Based on the Tobler’s first law of geography, “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”. This first law [...]
Individual tree detection and characterization using 3D remote sensing
Published: 2020-04-11
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Here, we will cover individual tree detection and characterization using 3D remote sensing. Simply, it means that point clouds are collected over a forested area using airborne laser scanning (ALS) or created using photogrammetric image interpretation and further used to detect individual trees using different algorithms. After the tree detection, the attributes of interest are predicted for each [...]
Introduction to geoinformation science
Published: 2020-04-11
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Here, we define a geoinformation system (GIS) as a system, which is designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present geospatial data. In university education, we study geoinformation science that is the science underlying geographic concepts, applications, and systems. Geoinformation science is dedicated to advancing our understanding of geographic processes and spatial [...]
POSSIBILITIES OF CHANGE DETECTION OF TREE AND FOREST ATTRIBUTES BY COMBINING TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNING BASED 3D POINT CLOUDS WITH UAV DATA
Published: 2020-04-01
Subjects: Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Exact and up-to-date information about forest resources is needed for decision makers when planning the use of forests. Knowledge about changes in forest environment and tree growth is a key factor for example when predicting the effects of climate change and estimating the amount of biomass and sequestered carbon in forests. New technologies, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), allow one to [...]
Performance of terrestrial laser scanning to characterize managed Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) stands is dependent on forest structural variation
Published: 2020-03-05
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Life Sciences
There is a limited understanding of how forest structure affects the performance of methods based on terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) in characterizing trees and forest environments. We aim to improve this understanding by studying how different forest management activities that shape tree size distributions affect the TLS-based forest characterization accuracy in managed Scots pine (Pinus [...]
Integrating UAV photogrammetry with terrestrial laser scanning to characterize managed forest stands
Published: 2020-03-03
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) provides detailed three-dimensional representation of the surrounding forest structure. However, due to close-range hemispherical scanning geometry the ability of TLS technique to comprehensively characterize the upper parts of forest canopy is often limited. To overcome challenges in upper canopy characterization, TLS point cloud were complemented with a point [...]
Realistic and simplified models of plant and leaf area indices for a seasonally dry tropical forest
Published: 2019-08-06
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences
Leaf Area Index (LAI) models that consider all phenological stages have not been developed for the Caatinga, the largest seasonally dry tropical forest in South America. LAI models that are currently used show moderate to high covariance when compared to in situ data, but they often lack accuracy in the whole spectra of possible values and do not consider the impact that the stems and branches [...]
Comment on Evaristo & McDonnell, Global analysis of streamflow response to forest management
Published: 2019-07-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
Forests play a key role in the water cycle, so both planting and removing forests can affect streamflow. In a recent Nature article1, Evaristo and McDonnell used a gradient-boosted-tree model to conclude that streamflow response to forest removal is predominantly controlled by the potential water storage in the landscape, and that removing the worlds forests would contribute an additional 34,098 [...]
Effectiveness of the Geospatial Data Processing and Use of Statistical Information for Proper Environmental Planning and Zoning: Example of the Šumava National Park, Czech Republic
Published: 2019-01-28
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biodiversity, Cell and Developmental Biology, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Education, Educational Methods, Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Soil Science, Sustainability, Wood Science and Pulp, Paper Technology
Current paper details methodology and principles of the zoning and ranging of the nature reserve area of Sumava National Park (Czech Republic) aimed at the effective planning and monitoring special nature areas.Methodology includes complex geoecological assessment of the territory, GIS application and processing of statristical data. The specific case study includes unique nature area of the [...]