Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Forest Management
Global forest typology at 10-meter resolution for forest and land-use monitoring
Published: 2026-05-22
Subjects: Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Distinguishing forest types---primary, naturally regenerating, planted, and plantation forests---from agricultural tree crops and other land uses is essential for carbon accounting, biodiversity assessment, conservation planning, and supply-chain regulation. However, no existing global dataset resolves this typology at high spatial resolution. We present the Forest Typology (ForTy) v1 dataset, a [...]
GEDIMetrics: a QGIS plugin for accessing and integrating multi-product GEDI spaceborne LiDAR data
Published: 2026-05-18
Subjects: Databases and Information Systems, Environmental Monitoring, Forest Management, Geographic Information Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
NASA's Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) provides near-global, high-resolution 3D LiDAR observations of forest vertical structure. However, GEDI products are distributed as independent HDF5 files organised by beam, requiring ad-hoc workflows for data discovery, quality filtering, spatial subsetting, and footprint-level alignment across products. Existing tools either target a single [...]
Remote sensing and deep learning for standing dead-tree detection and mapping: A review of advances, challenges, and future directions
Published: 2026-05-07
Subjects: Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Standing dead trees are visible indicators of recent tree mortality and an important transitional component linking forest disturbance to future lying deadwood, habitat availability, and carbon storage. As drought, insect outbreaks, pathogens, and climate extremes intensify tree mortality worldwide, scalable methods are needed to detect and map standing dead trees consistently across forest [...]
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, [...]
Advances in tree species identification from high-resolution aerial imagery and deep learning
Published: 2026-03-20
Subjects: Forest Management, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Tree species diversity shapes forest functioning, carbon storage, and ecosystem resilience, yet species-level inventories remain limited outside local studies. High-resolution aerial imagery and deep learning now enable individual tree crowns to be mapped at high spatial detail, offering new pathways for biodiversity and climate impact assessments. We synthesize 103 studies (2017–2024), [...]
Amazon deforestation footprint across global food and financial systems
Published: 2026-03-05
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Studies, Forest Management, Remote Sensing
Agriculture-driven deforestation in the Amazon remains a major threat to ecosystem stability, biodiversity, and climate regulation. Yet the role of global commodity consumption and finance in driving deforestation in the Amazon remains poorly understood and inadequately addressed. We provide the first comprehensive assessment of the Amazon deforestation footprint embedded in global supply chains [...]
Wildfire house loss hazard mapping and fuel management scenario planning on a Tasmanian wildland-urban interface using radiant heat and firebrand exposure modelling
Published: 2026-03-02
Subjects: Forest Management, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science
Globally, wildfire disasters are increasing in frequency through a combination of urban expansion into flammable wildlands and climate change. Accordingly, the wildland urban interface (WUI) is a crucial geographic domain for disaster risk reduction. Accurate mapping of wildfire house loss hazard is a basic requirement for effective wildfire risk management. We developed a novel geographic [...]
A Two-Stage Fitting Method for Truncated Stem Diameter Distributions
Published: 2025-11-05
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Forest Management, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Stem diameter distributions underpin growth projections, harvest scheduling, and carbon accounting, yet permanent sample plot inventories are routinely truncated by merchantability limits and maximum expected diameters. The accepted remedy is to fit truncated versions of the desired density, but those forms are seldom documented or supported in common software, so practitioners often default to [...]
Factors Affecting Aboveground Carbon Storage in Mixed Oak-Pine Forests: A Multiple Regression Analysis of Southeastern U.S. Forest Inventory Data
Published: 2025-11-02
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Multivariate Analysis, Natural Resources and Conservation, Plant Sciences, Statistical Models
This study investigated the factors affecting aboveground carbon storage in mixed oak-pine forests of the southeastern United States, with a particular focus on the influence of stand age. Using data from 946 Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plots collected from 2009 to 2019, a multiple regression analysis was conducted to determine the relative importance of various forest and topographic [...]
Forest harvesting operational planning tools: a systematic review of optimization, simulation, and spatial decision support systems
Published: 2025-10-15
Subjects: Forest Management, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering
Sustainable forest management relies on effective operational planning to ensure that harvesting practices support long-term objectives. Operations research methods have largely been used to support operational decision-making in forest harvest planning but the broader strengths, limitations and barriers to adoption remain unclear. This review addresses this gap by synthesizing existing research [...]
Developing a prototype decision support framework to assess forest management scenarios as a nature-based decarbonization solution for the mining sector: A case study in British Columbia, Canada
Published: 2025-10-14
Subjects: Forest Management, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering
This study, realized in partnership with a leading global gold producer, explores how forest management nature-based solutions (NbS) can be integrated into decarbonization strategies to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. NbS, including carbon sequestration in forests, are expected to play an important role in meeting decarbonization commitments in the mining sector. Our primary contribution is a [...]
WS3: An open-source Python framework for integrated simulation and optimization of forest landscape and wood supply systems
Published: 2025-10-12
Subjects: Forest Management, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering
Transparent decision support for forest landscapes demands integrated scheduling, carbon account-ing, and spatial reporting. WS3 is an open-source Python framework that unifies modular simu-lation, solver-backed Model I optimization, and raster allocation in a single workflow. The systemingests Woodstock-style inventories, actions, and scenarios; exposes an explicit data model; andautomates [...]
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 [...]
Support for Forest Conservation Imperatives: A Robust Approach for Multi-dimensional, Spatially Explicit Resilience Assessment
Published: 2025-09-18
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Forest Management, Natural Resources and Conservation, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Forest ecosystems are ecologically, socially, and culturally valuable, and are arguably considered essential to global sustainability. Climate change and altered disturbance regimes are threatening the future of forests around the globe. Many countries are coming together to support and implement conservation and monitoring initiatives to improve future prospects for the restoration and [...]
The effectiveness and potential cost-savings of operator select to manage brush and thin longleaf pine stands
Published: 2025-08-11
Subjects: Forest Management, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
We present a case study where loggers thinned and managed brush in longleaf pine stands that went unmanaged for a lengthy period in Trinity County, Texas, USA. Stands were overstocked and had a dense, shrubby understory from years of fire exclusion. Our main objectives were to compare the outcomes and cost-savings of loggers selecting trees to thin, or “operator select”, versus timber marking, [...]