Category: Forests

Careers, Forests, Research summaries

Lovasoa Rakotozafy: How large native trees and leaf litter promote amphibian diversity in Malagasy agroforests

Shortlisted for the 2025 Southwood Prize About the research Overview Agricultural expansion is the main driver of forest loss in many tropical regions including Madagascar, leading to increasingly fragmented habitats and forcing many species to persist in human-dominated landscapes. This creates a major challenge: how can we conserve biodiversity while supporting local livelihoods? Agroforestry is widely promoted as a solution to reconcile conservation and agriculture, but … Continue reading Lovasoa Rakotozafy: How large native trees and leaf litter promote amphibian diversity in Malagasy agroforests

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Careers, Forests, Research summaries

Skjold Alsted Søndergaard: Year-round grazing as a driver of plant diversity

Shortlisted for the 2025 Southwood Prize About the research Overview In temperate Europe, open ecosystems are typically managed through mechanical cutting or seasonal grazing, practices the EU subsidizes to the tune of 6 billion euros annually. Despite these massive financial efforts, protected grasslands are still losing species. My shortlisted paper, based on field data collected during my Master’s and realized during my PhD at Aarhus University, … Continue reading Skjold Alsted Søndergaard: Year-round grazing as a driver of plant diversity

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Research summaries, Careers, Forests

Xiaoling Wang: Using forest inventory and LiDAR observations to uncover plant traits cooling and humidifying effects

Shortlisted for the 2025 Southwood Prize About the research Overview Our paper investigates how to maximize the cooling effect of urban forests. We wanted to know whether a tree’s leaf traits (like nutrient content) are more important than its physical structure (like canopy size) for reducing air temperature and increasing humidity in cities. By combining traditional forest surveys with advanced LiDAR technology in Shanghai, we sought … Continue reading Xiaoling Wang: Using forest inventory and LiDAR observations to uncover plant traits cooling and humidifying effects

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Forests, Plant and soil ecology, Research summaries, Restoration

The potential of second-growth forests for bird diversity in a small holder landscape

Mareike Kortmann and co-authors share a summary about their latest study which focusses on the ability of sample coverage to impact diversity measures of bird communities in tropical lowland forests. Tropical old-growth forests are disappearing at an alarming rate, leading to concerning biodiversity loss. But amidst this global decline, some forest areas are also recovering. Second-growth forests—those that regenerate after agricultural use—may offer valuable contributions … Continue reading The potential of second-growth forests for bird diversity in a small holder landscape

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Careers, Forests, Research summaries

Ying Ki Law: The role of forests in landslide occurrence, recurrence and recovery

Shortlisted for the 2024 Southwood Prize Ying Ki Law explains how her team investigated post-landslide vegetation recovery patterns and the role of forests in occurrence and recurrence probability. About the research Overview Our paper examines how landslides recover and what factors influence their regrowth and landslide risk. While landslide management often focuses on engineering solutions, we emphasize the role of vegetation recovery in long-term stability. … Continue reading Ying Ki Law: The role of forests in landslide occurrence, recurrence and recovery

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Careers, Forests, Plant and soil ecology, Research summaries

Lijun Chen: Integrating variation in bacterial-fungal co-occurrence network with soil carbon dynamics

Shortlisted for the 2024 Southwood Prize Lijun Chen explores how bacterial-fungal interactions mediate soil organic carbon dynamics in the context of artificial forest ecosystems. About the research Overview Eucalyptus is one of the most widely planted tree species worldwide. It has been demostrated that long-term short-rotation practices of eucalyptus induced to declining of soil organic carbon content and ecosystem services capacity. Exploring the patterns of … Continue reading Lijun Chen: Integrating variation in bacterial-fungal co-occurrence network with soil carbon dynamics

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Forests, Monitoring and methods, Plant and soil ecology, Research summaries, Restoration

Remote sensing: A key to monitoring tropical forest restoration

Laura Vedovato introduces readers to a range of remote sensing tools, explaining how they can be applied to topical forests to monitor the effectiveness of restoration efforts. Read more in the original Review article. Introduction In recent years, global commitments to forest restoration, like the UN Decade on Restoration and the Global Biodiversity Framework, have highlighted the need for scalable, effective ways to track progress. … Continue reading Remote sensing: A key to monitoring tropical forest restoration

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Forests, Human-wildlife interactions, Research summaries

Salvage logging and subsequent post-windthrow management diminish forest bird communities for two decades

In this blog post, Michał Walesiak shares how increased bird diversity in an area of unmanaged windthrow persisted over a 20-year span in Poland. Natural disturbances in forests, such as hurricanes, fires, bark beetle outbreaks, often evoke negative emotions in people. Many find it hard to believe that hurricanes, fires, bark beetles… may actually bring some benefits to nature, such as increase in biodiversity! This … Continue reading Salvage logging and subsequent post-windthrow management diminish forest bird communities for two decades

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Forests, Research summaries, Video

Mixed forests and delicious seeds: How tree species change the relationship between rodents and seeds

In this blog post, Pedro Mittelman and Bernado Araújo discuss how forest composition can affect plant–animal interactions without necessarily altering animal communities or population densities. Forest mortality We are walking through a dead forest. It is not yet winter, but as we move amid still standing Norway spruce (Picea abies) trunks along the Harz mountains, we find no leaves attached to them. Here, approximately 20,000 … Continue reading Mixed forests and delicious seeds: How tree species change the relationship between rodents and seeds

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Forests, Invasive species, Research summaries

Controlling an invasive shrub across the year with basal bark herbicide treatment

Nick Barber and colleagues share a new invasive plant management technique to better control invasive species and improve biodiversity. Controlling invasive plants can be a never-ending battle for land managers, and this work is costly — not just in materials like expensive herbicide, but costly in time as well. This is especially the case when invasive control efforts overlap with other management responsibilities. Managers have … Continue reading Controlling an invasive shrub across the year with basal bark herbicide treatment

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