Woodland

About: Woodland is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 10204 publications have been published within this topic receiving 273240 citations. The topic is also known as: woodlands & wood.

Vegetation Ecology of Central Europe

Abstract: Foreword Preface to the first edition Preface to the second edition Preface to the third and fourth editions Part I. Introductory Survey: 1. The vegetation of Central Europe in general 2. The development of the plant cover under the influence of man Part II. Near-natural woods and thickets: 1. General view of the central European woodlands 2. Beech and mixed beech woods 3. Other deciduous woodland excluding flood plains and mires 4. Coniferous woodland and mixed woods dominated by conifers 5. Tree and shrub vegetation of flood plains and peat lands Part III. Other Near-Natural Formations: 1. The vegetation of fresh water, its banks and springs 2. Woodland fens and intermediate mires compared with other mire types 3. Raised bogs and the communities connected with them 4. Sea marshes and inland saline habitats 5. Dunes and their vegetation successions 6. The vegetation above the alpine tree line 7. Plant life in the region of eternal snow 8. On the epiphytic vegetation in central Europe Part IV. Formations Created and Maintained Largely by Man's Activities: 1. Arid and semi-arid grasslands in colline and monotane climate 2. Dwarf-shrub heaths and commons on strongly acid soils 3. Forestry plantations and woodland clearings 4. Woodland edges, bushes, hedges and their barbarous margins 5. Hay and litter meadows 6. Manured pastures, trodden swards and those subject to flooding 7. Man-influenced vegetation of muddy ground, lakesides and banks 8. Ruderal communities of drier sites 9. Weed communities of arable land, gardens and vineyards 10. Vegetation development on abandoned land Tabular summary and index: Bibliography Remarks on the changes in the system of plant sociology Summary of the vegetation units and species Subject Index.

The Color of Light in Forests and Its Implications

Abstract: Forests exhibit much variation in light environments, and this can affect communication among animals, communication between animals and plants, photosynthesis, and plant morphogenesis. Light environments are caused by, and can be predicted from, the geometry of the light paths, the weather conditions, and the time of day. The structure of forests leads to four major light habitats when the sun is not blocked by clouds: forest shade, woodland shade, small gaps, and large gaps. These are characterized by yellow—green, blue—gray, reddish, and "white" ambient light spectra, respectively. When the sun is blocked by clouds, the spectra of these four habitats converge on that of large gaps and open areas, so the single light environment during cloudy weather will be called open/cloudy. An additional light environment (early/late) is associated with low sun angles (near dawn or dusk); it is purplish. Each light environment is well defined and was found in forests of Trinidad, Panama, Costa Rica, Australia, California, and Florida. Scattered literature references suggest similar patterns elsewhere in North America, Europe, and Java. Perceived colors of animals, flowers, and fruits depend upon the interaction between ambient light color and the reflectance color of the animal or plant parts. As a result, an animal or plant may have a different appearance in each environment, i.e., a color pattern may be relatively cryptic in some light environments while relatively conspicuous in others. This has strong implications for the joint evolution of visual signals and vision, as well as microhabitat choice. Plant growth and form may also be affected by variation in the color of forest light.

Drought-induced shift of a forest–woodland ecotone:Rapid landscape response to climate variation

Abstract: In coming decades, global climate changes are expected to produce large shifts in vegetation distributions at unprecedented rates. These shifts are expected to be most rapid and extreme at ecotones, the boundaries between ecosystems, particularly those in semiarid landscapes. However, current models do not adequately provide for such rapid effects—particularly those caused by mortality—largely because of the lack of data from field studies. Here we report the most rapid landscape-scale shift of a woody ecotone ever documented: in northern New Mexico in the 1950s, the ecotone between semiarid ponderosa pine forest and pinon–juniper woodland shifted extensively (2 km or more) and rapidly (<5 years) through mortality of ponderosa pines in response to a severe drought. This shift has persisted for 40 years. Forest patches within the shift zone became much more fragmented, and soil erosion greatly accelerated. The rapidity and the complex dynamics of the persistent shift point to the need to represent more accurately these dynamics, especially the mortality factor, in assessments of the effects of climate change.

Forest carbon sinks in the northern hemisphere

Abstract: There is general agreement that terrestrial systems in the Northern Hemisphere provide a significant sink for atmospheric CO2; however, estimates of the magnitude and distribution of this sink vary greatly. National forest inventories provide strong, measurement-based constraints on the magnitude of net forest carbon uptake. We brought together forest sector C budgets for Canada, the United States, Europe, Russia, and China that were derived from forest inventory information, allometric relationships, and supplementary data sets and models. Together, these suggest that northern forests and woodlands provided a total sink for 0.6–0.7 Pg of C per year (1 Pg = 1015 g) during the early 1990s, consisting of 0.21 Pg C/yr in living biomass, 0.08 Pg C/yr in forest products, 0.15 Pg C/yr in dead wood, and 0.13 Pg C/yr in the forest floor and soil organic matter. Estimates of changes in soil C pools have improved but remain the least certain terms of the budgets. Over 80% of the estimated sink occurred in one-third of the forest area, in temperate regions affected by fire suppression, agricultural abandonment, and plantation forestry. Growth in boreal regions was offset by fire and other disturbances that vary considerably from year to year. Comparison with atmospheric inversions suggests significant land C sinks may occur outside the forest sector.