Publications related to Forest cover

Regional uniqueness of tree species composition and response to forest loss and climate change

Devis Tuia, Nina Marion Aurélia Van Tiel, Loïc Pellissier

The conservation and restoration of forest ecosystems require detailed knowledge of the native plant compositions. Here, we map global forest tree composition and assess the impacts of historical forest cover loss and climate change on trees. The global oc ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Spatiotemporal wildfire modeling through point processes with moderate and extreme marks

Jonathan Koh Boon Han

Accurate spatiotemporal modeling of conditions leading to moderate and large wildfires provides better understanding of mechanisms driving fire-prone ecosystems and improves risk management. Here, we develop a joint model for the occurrence intensity and t ...

2023

Spatiotemporal patterns of urbanization during the last four decades in Switzerland and their impacts on urban heat islands

Martí Bosch Padrós

Urbanization is nowadays a global phenomenon which is increasingly concentrating the world's population in cities. In Switzerland, recent decades have seen an unprecedented loss of arable land due to urbanization, which has triggered amendments in the spat ...

EPFL2021

Structural variation of forest edges across Europe

Matteo Tolosano

Forest edges are interfaces between forest interiors and adjacent land cover types. They are important elements in the landscape with almost 20% of the global forest area located within 100 m of the edge. Edges are structurally different from forest interi ...

ELSEVIER2020

Edge influence on understorey plant communities depends on forest management

Matteo Tolosano

Questions Does the influence of forest edges on plant species richness and composition depend on forest management? Do forest specialists and generalists show contrasting patterns? ...

WILEY2020

21-cm observations and warm dark matter models

Alexey Boyarsky, Wessel Valkenburg, Oleg Ruchayskiy

Observations of the redshifted 21-cm signal (in absorption or emission) allow us to peek into the epoch of the "Dark Ages" and the onset of reionization. These data can provide a novel way to learn about the nature of dark matter, in particular, about the ...

American Physical Society2019

Variation in Detrital Resource Stoichiometry Signals Differential Carbon to Nutrient Limitation for Stream Consumers Across Biomes

Janine Rüegg

Stoichiometric ratios of resources and consumers have been used to predict nutrient limitation across diverse terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. In forested headwater streams, coarse and fine benthic organic matter (CBOM, FBOM) are primary basal resources ...

SPRINGER2018

Tropical soils degraded by slash-and-burn cultivation can be recultivated when amended with ashes and compost

Alexandre Buttler, Vincent Eric Jules Jassey, Bjorn Jozef Maria Robroek, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Justine Marie Gay des Combes, Muhammad Saleem Arif, Leia Soraya Véronique Falquet, Clara Sanz Carrillo

In many tropical regions, slash-and-burn agriculture is considered as a driver of deforestation; the forest is converted into agricultural land by cutting and burning the trees. However, the fields are abandoned after few years because of yield decrease an ...

Wiley2017

Evaporation from cultivated and semi-wild Sudanian Savanna in west Africa

Marc Parlange, Natalie Claire Ceperley, Theophile Mande, Nicolaas Cornelis van de Giesen

Rain-fed farming is the primary livelihood of semi-arid west Africa. Changes in land cover have the potential to affect precipitation, the critical resource for production. Turbulent flux measurements from two eddy-covariance towers and additional observat ...

European Geosciences Union2017

Improving slash-and-burn agriculture in Central Menabe, Madagascar

Justine Marie Gay des Combes

Slash-and-burn agriculture is considered as an important driver of deforestation in the tropics. In Madagascar, a biodiversity hotspot, this type of agriculture particularly threatens the tropical forest cover. On the south-western coast of the island, in ...

EPFL2017

Integrating models across temporal and spatial scales to simulate landscape patterns and dynamics in mountain pasture-woodlands

Alexander Ludwig Johannes Peringer

Context Pasture-woodlands are semi-natural landscapes that result from the combined influences of climate, management, and intrinsic vegetation dynamics. These landscapes are sensitive to future changes in land use and climate, but our ability to predict t ...

Springer2017

Quantifying the effects of land use and climate on Holocene vegetation in Europe

Jed Oliver Kaplan

Early agriculture can be detected in palaeovegetation records, but quantification of the relative importance of climate and land use in influencing regional vegetation composition since the onset of agriculture is a topic that is rarely addressed. We prese ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2017

Slash-and-burn agriculture and tropical cyclone activity in Madagascar: Implication for soil fertility dynamics and corn performance

Alexandre Buttler, Bjorn Jozef Maria Robroek, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Justine Marie Gay des Combes, Thomas Guillaume

On the western coast of Madagascar, the dry tropical forest of Kirindy may disappear in the next 50 years because of its rapid conversion into agricultural land by slash-and-burn cultivation. The slash-and-burn fields are cultivated during 3 years in avera ...

Elsevier Science Bv2017

Negative elevation-dependent warming trend in the Eastern Alps

Mountain regions and the important ecosystem services they provide are considered to be very vulnerable to the current warming, and recent studies suggest that high-mountain environments experience more rapid changes in temperature than environments at low ...

Iop Publishing Ltd2016

Multi-scale feedbacks between tree regeneration traits and herbivore behavior explain the structure of pasture-woodland mosaics

Alexandre Buttler, François Gillet, Alexander Ludwig Johannes Peringer

The pasture-woodlands of Central Europe are low-intensity grazing systems in which the structural richness of dynamic forest-grassland mosaics is causal for their high biodiversity. Distinct mosaic patterns in Picea abies- and Fagus sylvatica-dominated pas ...

Springer Verlag2016

Landscape-scale simulation experiments test Romanian and Swiss management guidelines for mountain pasture-woodland habitat diversity

Alexandre Buttler, François Gillet, Alexander Ludwig Johannes Peringer, Ioana Stoicescu

Distinct guidelines have been proposed in Romania and Switzerland for the management of pasture woodlands that either focused on the regulation of grazing pressure (Romanian production perspective) or overall tree cover (Swiss conservation perspective). Ho ...

Elsevier2016

The search for old-growth forests in Switzerland

Rita Bütler Sauvain

Old-growth forests and stands have multiple values, such as biological, scientific, socioeconomic, aesthetic, spiritual and cultural ones, but they are very rare in central Europe. Currently, an overview about the existence and size of old-growth forest pa ...

2015

Impacts of changes in land use and land cover on atmospheric chemistry and air quality over the 21st century

Jed Oliver Kaplan, Songmei Wu

The effects of future land use and land cover change on the chemical composition of the atmosphere and air quality are largely unknown. To investigate the potential effects associated with future changes in vegetation driven by atmospheric CO2 concentratio ...

Copernicus Publications2012

Extreme temperature analysis under forest cover compared to an open field

Anthony Christopher Davison, Martine Rebetez, Jacques Ferrez

We analyse air temperature data from 14 sites in Switzerland, each with two weather stations in close proximity, one under a forest canopy and the other in the open. We use the statistics of extremes to investigate how extremely high maximum and extremely ...

2011

Stream Temperature Response to Three Riparian Vegetation Scenarios by Use of a Distributed Temperature Validated Model

Martin Vetterli, Aurèle Parriaux, Wolf Hendrik Huwald, Marc Parlange, Guillermo Barrenetxea Kobas

Elevated in-stream temperature has led to a surge in the occurrence of parasitic intrusion proliferative kidney disease and has resulted in fish kills throughout Switzerland's waterways. Data from distributed temperature sensing (DTS) in-stream measurement ...

2010