The following is the editor's own condensed summary of the articles in issue 25.6, which has a world-around profile with contributions of two articles each from China and Korea, and with other studies from Canada, Austria, and Finland.
The decay of coarse woody debris contributes to the carbon loss from forests, but its role has been difficult to measure due to the slow carbon turnover rates. In this study, Jiabing Wu and colleagues presented a closed chambers technique in a Chinese temperate forest, and estimated that downed logs accounted for up to 15% of the net exchange of carbon.
The increasing use of slash and stumps for bioenergy has changed the prerequisites for the subsequent regeneration work. In this article, Juha Rantala and colleagues studied the implications for soil scarification. They found that it was more cost-effective to make spot-mounding with a continuously working equipment attached to a forwarder, compared to integrated spot mounding and stump lifting on an excavator, or to a separate spot-mounding on an excavator.
No lasting negative effects on soil properties were found in a long-term site-preparation study. The journal reported in 2009 about the results on survival and yield in the Canadian experiment. In this paper, Jacob Boateng and colleagues follow up the results by examining 20-year effects on soil properties such as bulk density, nutrients, and pH. The effects of mechanical site preparation were shown to be short-lived.
The mountain goral is an endangered goat species in Korea, and its small population is primarily restricted to the inaccessible demilitarized zone. People's willingness to pay for a reintroduction into a publicly accessible national park was investigated by Sang-Yoel Han and colleagues. Visitors to the national park were willing to pay 13 USD per household to increase the population from the current 10 to 50 animals, and 18 USD for an increase to 200.
China is a huge country, but Bin Wang and colleagues anyway took on the challenging task to estimate the primary production of its forests. The national forest inventory was used to establish relationships between volume, biomass, increment, and litterfall, and to calculate net primary production and net ecosystem production. The former was on average 4.8 Mg ha−1 year−1.
The carbon stock and biomass content of the Korean forests have increased almost 12 times over the last 50 years! Such a large increase is due to reforestation and active forest management. Xiaodong Li and colleagues made the estimates based on historical forest inventories from the country.
A majority of landowners in Denmark are more positive to set aside forest for nature conservation if they are financially compensated. There is, however, owners who are not motivated by money, and some are even less positive if presented to financial compensation. Tove Enggrob Boon and colleagues made the study, based on a country-wide survey among private forest owners.
Forest fuel supply can be more secure if the traditional supply of forest chips is complemented with salvaged pulpwood under periods of shortage. Peter Rauch simulated the supply to heat and power plants in Austria under risk. Risks included storms, bark beetle infestations, and reduced trafficability of forest roads, which all could increase as an effect of climate change.