175 results match your criteria: "School of Forest Sciences[Affiliation]"

Balancing increasing demand for wood products while also maintaining forest biodiversity is a paramount challenge. Europe's Biodiversity and Forest Strategies for 2030 attempt to address this challenge. Together, they call for strict protection of 10% of land area, including all primary and old growth forests, increasing use of ecological forestry, and less reliance on monocultural plantations.

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Article Synopsis
  • L-asparaginases are enzymes that convert L-asparagine into L-aspartic acid and ammonia, and they are important in the pharmaceutical industry, particularly for cancer treatments.
  • Scientists are exploring yeast-derived L-asparaginases as an alternative to bacterial ones, which can cause adverse immune responses.
  • The study focuses on a specific yeast enzyme, Lachancea thermotolerans, demonstrating that a mutant form of this enzyme shows increased activity and significant antileukemic potential compared to commercial bacterial versions.
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Carbon-water interaction studies between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems are especially needed today in Arctic and Boreal regions, as they are facing drastic warming and precipitation shifts. Despite the importance of streams in the carbon cycle, northern stream-based studies are scarce, owing to a lack of measurements throughout the north, and possibly skewing global greenhouse gas estimates. We used a combination of multiscale measurements to quantify water sources (HO isotope proxies), carbon availability (dissolved in/organic carbon concentrations) and quality (water absorbance, SUVA -index), microbial community structure (16S rRNA sequencing), and carbon dioxide (CO) and methane (CH) fluxes and concentrations.

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A major consequence of anthropogenic climate change is the intensification and extension of drought periods. Prolonged drought can alter conditions in drained peatlands and cause disturbances in microbial communities in the topsoil layer of the peat. Varying environmental conditions throughout the growing season, such as the availability of organic matter and nutrients, temperature and water table, further impact these communities and consequently affect carbon and nutrient cycles.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Tree bark beetle infestations threaten forests by harming biodiversity, carbon storage, and timber resources, highlighting the need for early detection and improved forest management practices.
  • - An innovative intelligent system using multispectral images and generative-adversarial networks (GANs) was developed to assess bark beetle damage, achieving a classification accuracy of 87.5% while reducing reliance on large labeled datasets.
  • - The research has important implications for forestry management and ecosystem preservation, emphasizing the need for responsible implementation, integration with traditional ecological knowledge, and addressing potential risks like data misinterpretation and privacy concerns.
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The effects of invertebrates on wood decomposition across the world.

Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc

September 2024

Systems Ecology, A-LIFE, Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1108, Amsterdam, 1081 HZ, The Netherlands.

Article Synopsis
  • * When invertebrates are involved, wood breaks down about 40% faster, especially in tropical areas where termites are really active.
  • * The study shows that both the size of the wood and its outer layer affect how invertebrates and fungi work together to decompose it.
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The complex includes fungi with similar morphologies but which are thought to represent different species. The lack of available type material and associated absence of multiple locus sequence data has complicated identification of these fungi. The aim of this study was to clarify the identity of the laccate species occurring in Finland by inferring a phylogeny using DNA sequences from available boreal-temperate material.

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Impact of severe drought on biogenic volatile organic compounds emissions from Sphagnum mosses in boreal peatlands.

Sci Total Environ

November 2024

Peatland and Soil Ecology Research Group, School of Forest Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland.

Climate change and the associated increased frequency of extreme weather events are likely to alter the emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) from boreal peatlands. Hydrologically sensitive Sphagnum mosses are keystone species in boreal peatland ecosystems that are known to emit various BVOCs. However, it is not known how their emissions respond to seasonal droughts.

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Pre-drought effects on northern temperate trees and vine invasion in forest gaps hindering regeneration.

Sci Total Environ

November 2024

School of Forest Sciences and Landscape Architecture, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Republic of Korea. Electronic address:

Article Synopsis
  • Northern temperate coniferous forests are important because they connect different types of forests, but they are facing problems from things like climate change and human activities.
  • Recent research focuses on how severe drought affects tree growth in these forests, studying specific species like Abies nephrolepis and Picea jezoensis.
  • Some trees recover well from drought, while others resist it better; however, the growth before a drought plays a big role in how they react, and new disturbances may happen because of climate change.
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Extending the SUSI peatland simulator to include dissolved organic carbon formation, transport and biodegradation - Proper water management reduces lateral carbon fluxes and improves carbon balance.

Sci Total Environ

November 2024

Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 27, 00014, Finland; School of Forest Sciences, Faculty of Science, Forestry and Technology, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland.

Drainage intensity and forest management in peatlands affect carbon dioxide (CO) emissions to the atmosphere and export of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to water courses. The peatland carbon (C) balance results from a complex network of ecosystem processes from where lateral C fluxes have typically been ignored. Here, we present a new version of the SUSI Peatland simulator, the first advanced process-based ecosystem model that compiles a full C balance in drained forested peatland including DOC formation, transport and biodegradation.

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Arctic and subarctic ecosystems are experiencing rapid changes in vegetation composition and productivity due to global warming. Tundra wetlands are especially susceptible to these changes, which may trigger shifts in soil moisture dynamics. It is therefore essential to accurately map plant biomass and topsoil moisture.

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Environmental drivers of increased ecosystem respiration in a warming tundra.

Nature

May 2024

Climate Impacts Research Centre, Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, Abisko, Sweden.

Arctic and alpine tundra ecosystems are large reservoirs of organic carbon. Climate warming may stimulate ecosystem respiration and release carbon into the atmosphere. The magnitude and persistency of this stimulation and the environmental mechanisms that drive its variation remain uncertain.

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Impact of species composition on fire-induced stand damage in Spanish forests.

Sci Rep

April 2024

Joint Research Unit CTFC - AGROTECNIO, Ctra de St. Llorenç de Morunys, Km 2, 25280, Solsona, Spain.

Mixed forests play a fundamental ecological role increasing biodiversity and providing ecosystem services; it has been suggested they have higher resilience and resistance against disturbances, particularly fire. Here, we compare tree mortality in post-fire mixed and pure stands in Spain, on 2,782 plots and 30,239 trees during the period 1986 to 2007. We show evidence that mixed stands can have higher post-fire mortality than pure stands, and specific mixtures of species with different fire-related strategies increase the stand's vulnerability to fire damage versus pure stands of either species, such is the case of Pinus halepensis-Pinus nigra mixtures.

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Forests dominate the landscape at high latitudes in the boreal regions and contribute significantly to the global carbon stock. Large areas are protected and provide possibilities to analyze natural forest dynamics including resilience to climate change. In Fennoscandia, Scots pine ( L.

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Plant biomass is a fundamental ecosystem attribute that is sensitive to rapid climatic changes occurring in the Arctic. Nevertheless, measuring plant biomass in the Arctic is logistically challenging and resource intensive. Lack of accessible field data hinders efforts to understand the amount, composition, distribution, and changes in plant biomass in these northern ecosystems.

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Climate change and increasing human activities are impacting ecosystems and their biodiversity. Quantitative measurements of essential biodiversity variables (EBV) and essential climate variables are used to monitor biodiversity and carbon dynamics and evaluate policy and management interventions. Ecosystem structure is at the core of EBVs and carbon stock estimation and can help to inform assessments of species and species diversity.

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Unnatural amino acids (UAAs) offer significant promise in a wide range of applications, including drug discovery, the custom design of peptides and proteins, and their utility and use as markers for monitoring molecular interactions in biological research. The synthesis of UAAs presents a formidable challenge and can be classified into two primary categories: enzymatic and chemical synthesis. Notably, the enzymatic route, specifically asymmetric synthesis, emerges as a an attractive method for procuring enantiopure UAAs with high efficiency, owing to its streamlined and concise reaction mechanism.

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Forest landscape shield models for assessing audio-visual disturbances of wind turbines.

J Environ Manage

February 2024

University of Eastern Finland, School of Forest Sciences, P.O. Box 111, FI-80101, Joensuu, Finland. Electronic address:

Wind power is one of the fastest growing renewable energy sectors and plays a focal role in the transition to a fossil fuel free society in Europe. Technological developments have enabled the construction of turbines within forested areas, which has raised concerns regarding the audio-visual impact on these landscapes. However, there is a paucity of research with regard to the role that forests may play in mitigating the negative impacts of wind farms.

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Chromium (III) removal by perennial emerging macrophytes in floating treatment wetlands.

Sci Rep

December 2023

Department of Green Chemistry and Technology, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, 9050, Ghent, Belgium.

Floating treatment wetlands (FTWs) are a sustainable solution to treat polluted water, but their role in chromium (Cr(III)) removal under neutral pH conditions remains poorly understood. This study evaluated the potential of FTWs planted with two perennial emergent macrophytes, Phragmites australis and Iris pseudacorus, to remove Cr(III) and nutrients (N and PO-P) from water containing 7.5 mg/L TN, 1.

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Phacidium infestans (synonym Gremmenia infestans) is a significant pathogen that impacts Pinus species across the northern regions of Europe and Asia. This study introduces the genome sequence of P. infestans Karsten DSM 5139 (Phain), obtained through Pacbio technology.

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Monitoring of carbon-water fluxes at Eurasian meteorological stations using random forest and remote sensing.

Sci Data

September 2023

State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, Xinjiang, 830011, China.

Simulating the carbon-water fluxes at more widely distributed meteorological stations based on the sparsely and unevenly distributed eddy covariance flux stations is needed to accurately understand the carbon-water cycle of terrestrial ecosystems. We established a new framework consisting of machine learning, determination coefficient (R), Euclidean distance, and remote sensing (RS), to simulate the daily net ecosystem carbon dioxide exchange (NEE) and water flux (WF) of the Eurasian meteorological stations using a random forest model or/and RS. The daily NEE and WF datasets with RS-based information (NEE-RS and WF-RS) for 3774 and 4427 meteorological stations during 2002-2020 were produced, respectively.

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Global commitments to mitigating climate change and halting biodiversity loss require reliable information about Earth's ecosystems. Increasingly, such information is obtained from multiple sources of remotely sensed data combined with data acquired in the field. This new wealth of data poses challenges regarding the combination of different data sources to derive the required information and assess uncertainties.

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Article Synopsis
  • Insect and disease outbreaks in forests are increasingly problematic due to climate change, which disrupts ecosystem services like carbon storage and biodiversity conservation.
  • The Database of European Forest Insect and Disease Disturbances (DEFID2) compiles over 650,000 records of such disturbances from 1963 to 2021 across eight European countries, utilizing methods like ground surveys and remote sensing.
  • DEFID2 provides detailed qualitative and quantitative data on forest disturbances, enabling researchers to study ecological processes and assess the impacts of these biotic disturbances more effectively.
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Climate warming and projected increase in summer droughts puts northern peatlands under pressure by subjecting them to a combination of gradual drying and extreme weather events. The combined effect of those on peatland functions is poorly known. Here, we studied the impact of long-term water level drawdown (WLD) and contrasting weather conditions on leaf phenology and biomass production of ground level vegetation in boreal peatlands.

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