Decline And Dieback Of Trees And Forests

International in scope, this book provides a foundation of diverse ideas and approaches to explain complex problems of trees.

Forest damage, forest decline, forest dieback - not related to biotic agents - is occurring in the Atlantic and Pacific regions. In Europe and Eastern North America this serious problem is considered to be, at least to some part, related to industrial air pollutants and their atmospheric conversion products, such as acid rain or ozone. Forest declines in the Pacific region have been attributed largely to natural causes involving forest dynamics, since air pollution and other negative anthropogenic influences are practically absent. Presented here are typical decline phenomena in the Pacific and Atlantic region, potential causes, effects and mitigation strategies, and the question whether there are any similarities on a functional or structural basis is addressed.

From the sugarbush of Vermont and the dogwoods of Maryland to the hollows in Appalachia and the mountainsides of the West, a whole range of human-caused maladies--acid rain, ultraviolet rays, and other eco-hazards--has been the cause of major forest decline. Little explores the phenomenon with scientists and government officials, and recounts their respondes to this threat to global ecological balance.

The idea for this book arose in 1993, after the Free State of Bavaria through its Bayrisches Staatsministerium rur Landesentwicklung und Umweltfragen (Bavarian Ministry of Regional Development and the Environment) decided to discontinue both the Bavarian project management (PBWU) for forest decline research and the multidisciplinary field research on the Wank Mountain in the Alps near Garmisch. Forest decline through the action of ozone and other photooxidants was a main topic of the supported re search in the Alps and will be a topic of new investigations in the Bavarian Forest. Many interesting results were obtained, but the researchers involved have not had sufficient time to allow reliable conclusions to be drawn. It was therefore decided to ask inter national experts for contributions in order to summarize the best available evidence of a possible link between ozone and forest decline - a topic which has been studied in the USA since the late 1950s and in Europe since the early 1980s. The original idea of Waldsterben as an irreversible large-scale dieback of forests in Germany was soon recognized to be wrong (Forschungsbeirat 1989). However, the new criteria used for the official German and European damage inventories (loss or yel lowing of needles or leaves, tree morphology) indicate that per sistently high percentages of damaged spruce and pine remain, and there is an increasing percentage of damaged beech and oak, with a high proportion of biotic disease (Forschungsbeirat 1989; UN-ECE 1995).

A unique report of the current status and future survival of the world's forests compiled by an international independent commission.

This book provides case studies and general views of the main processes involved in the ecosystem shifts occurring in the high mountains and analyses the implications for nature conservation. Case studies from the Pyrenees are preponderant, with a comprehensive set of mountain ranges surrounded by highly populated lowland areas also being considered. The introductory and closing chapters will summarise the main challenges that nature conservation may face in mountain areas under the environmental shifting conditions. Further chapters put forward approaches from environmental geography, functional ecology, biogeography, and paleoenvironmental reconstructions. Organisms from microbes to large carnivores, and ecosystems from lakes to forest will be considered. This interdisciplinary book will appeal to researchers in mountain ecosystems, students and nature professionals. This book is open access under a CC BY license.