Vol. 61, No. 3 (June 2015) Editors: Bogdan M. Strimbu and Harold E. Burkhart
The Second Complex Forest Ecosystems conference was held in conjunction with the Southern Mensurationists annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, October 7-9, 2013. Organized under the umbrella of IUFRO Working Group 4.03 — Informatics, Modeling and Statistics — the 2013 event included research topics of interest for the southern region of the United States, such as management of loblolly pine or bottomland hardwoods. In addition, the conference initiated a conversation within the forest research community that expanded the scope beyond assessment and modeling to also include the computational complexity of the methods used to estimate parameters and to develop models of forests. This issue of Forest Science includes a special section comprised of five articles from the Second Complex Forest Ecosystem conference.
Vol. 60, No. 1 (February 2014) This issue includes four papers on the general topic of uncertainty associated with individual tree volume/biomass models:
Vol. 58, No. 5 (October 2012) Editors: Chris Maier, Kurt Johnsen, John Butnor, and Dana Nelson Articles in this special issue result from a special session held at the 16th Biennial Southern Silviculture Research Conference, February 15-17, 2011 in Charleston, South Carolina. The transition to a low carbon economy in the United States presents significant opportunities and challenges for the forestry sector. The bounty of forests in the southern United States presents an opportunity for southern landowners to help stabilize greenhouse gas emissions in the United States over the coming decades. At the same time, the forestry sector will be a vital source of biomass for energy and liquid fuel production in emerging bioenergy markets. Thus, the forest sector in the south is poised to develop technologies that both produce energy with little or no net greenhouse gas emissions and help sequester carbon from the atmosphere. The potential economic benefits from carbon offset payments and biomass for energy creates incentives for landowners to practice sustainable management to maintain existing forests, afforest nominal agriculture land, and increase forest productivity. However, the co-benefits and costs of changing forest management practices to meet the goals of reduced CO2 emissions and energy security are not well understood. The special session was organized to address the state of science in the forest carbon cycle research, political and technical barriers in developing carbon accounting systems, bioenergy systems, economics of carbon sequestration, and co-benefits and costs as the southern region moves toward a low carbon economy.
Vol. 58, No. 3 (June 2012) Editors: Ronald E. McRoberts, Erkki O. Tomppo, Klemens Schadauer, and Göran Ståhl International agreements increasingly require that countries report estimates of national forest resources. National forest inventories (NFIs) are a primary source of data for national and large-area assessments of sustainability and biodiversity and for international forest resource reporting. However, estimates produced by different countries lack comparability because of differences in NFI definitions, plot configurations, measured variables, and measurement protocols. While standardization of nomenclature, definitions, and methods may be the best long-term solution, harmonization acknowledges that individual countries have developed the unique features of their NFIs for specific purposes and focuses on developing methods for producing comparable estimates despite the lack of standardization. Action E43, "Harmonization of National Forest Inventories in Europe: Techniques for Common Reporting" of the European program, Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), focused on developing methods for producing harmonized NFI estimates. The papers in this special issue review the international reporting requirements, previous international harmonization efforts, and the Action's objectives, methods, and accomplishments; report a mathematical approach for comparing national and international definitions; describe issues related to constructing bridge definitions to span the gap between national and reference definitions; report the development and testing of bridge definitions; overview how NFIs can contribute to biodiversity assessments; and provide a comprehensive review of the forest naturalness concept and NFI variables appropriate for estimating relevant indicators.