Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Forest Management
Previously undetected disturbances are the dominant driver of carbon loss in protected Amazonian forests
Published: 2026-10-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Forest Management, Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Amazonian forests face increasing pressures from human-induced deforestation and degradation, compounded by natural disturbances such as droughts and windthrow events. In response, forest protection policies strengthened and formalised large protected areas and Indigenous lands, now covering 43% of the region. However, clearings and degradation in these protected areas are complex and hard to [...]
A vertical vegetation structure model of the Earth
Published: 2026-10-06
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Wood Science and Pulp, Paper Technology
Knowing the global distribution of vegetation structure is an essential prerequisite to better quantify, model, and manage carbon, water, energy, and biodiversity in the Earth system. Despite its recognized importance, vertical structure measurements remain sparse at global scales, limiting our understanding of the links between structure and ecosystem functions and resilience. Here we present [...]
The Uncertainty Landscape Beyond Variance
Published: 2026-09-02
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Forest Management, Mathematics, Statistics and Probability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Modern science has become good at measuring uncertainty. Across statistics, artificial intelligence, economics, Earth observation, environmental modelling and decision science, researchers increasingly invoke uncertainty when interpreting evidence, evaluating predictions and supporting decisions. These disciplines often use the word uncertainty to describe conceptually different scientific [...]
Biological Dynamics for Sustainable Carbon Sequestration
Published: 2026-08-27
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biology, Climate, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Forest Management, Planetary Biogeochemistry
Earth’s atmosphere is shaped by the interplay of biological systems operating across interlinked biogeochemical cycles and, more recently, by anthropogenic emissions. Here, we thoroughly examine the potential for engineering biological systems across ecosystems for sustainable carbon storage. This centralization and comparative analysis of the potential of all key global ecosystems aims to [...]
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, [...]
Review of deep learning for tree species identification from high-resolution remote sensing imagery
Published: 2026-03-20
Subjects: Forest Management, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Tree species information is essential for monitoring forest composition, carbon storage, biodiversity, and resilience to environmental change, but remains largely available only at local scales. Centimeter-resolution remotely sensed imagery and deep learning are shifting species mapping from stands to individual tree crowns, yet the diversity of tree species, data, and methods has fragmented this [...]
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 [...]