Dijana Vuletić

Croatian Forest Research Institute · EFISEE

To effectively govern urban forests as nature-based solutions, several critical factors must be considered. Collaboration and partnerships stand as the foundation of effective UF-NBS management, involving government agencies, NGOs, and local communities as well as fostering regional cooperation. Robust planning and strategy development, such as Urb...

Studies dealing with services and benefits of urban green space are overrepresented compared to those addressing disservices, perceived constraints and other negative perceptions. Even when focusing on disservices and perceived constraints, the studies often take into account only a limited number of reasons for the negative perception. In this stu...

The governance of urban forests as nature-based solutions (UF-NBS) in cities presents numerous challenges for public officials as different socio-cultural, environmental, political, and economic priorities must be bridged. In this context, co-production emerges as a collaborative approach that brings together stakeholders from various sectors to ge...

In Europe, forest fires are a serious and constant threat. They destroy forests and forest land, causing damage, financial loss, and long-lasting impacts on forest ecosystem services. There are several ways to decrease the number of forest fires, including continuous investment in fire prevention measures and the intensive implementation of adaptiv...

Payments for ecosystem services are a voluntary market-based instrument to remunerate provider(s) of ecosystem services by those who benefit from them. Our research aimed to create an ex post evaluation framework to identify bottlenecks and elements hindering the success of a solution-driven PES scheme. The framework was applied to a case study to...

Payments for Ecosystem Services are a voluntary market-based instrument to remunerate provider(s) of ecosystem services by those who benefit from them. Our research aimed to create an ex-post evaluation framework to identify bottlenecks and elements hindering the success of a solution-driven PES scheme. The framework was applied to a case study to...

Over the last decades, the natural disturbance is increasingly putting pressure on European forests. Shifts in disturbance regimes may compromise forest functioning and the continuous provisioning of ecosystem services to society, including their climate change mitigation potential. Although forests are central to many European policies, we lack th...

The potential benefits of public urban green spaces (UGS) are widely recognized and well documented, but the actual realization of these benefits depends on appropriate design and ongoing maintenance. To properly consider the needs and preferences of users, the professionals who plan and manage UGS should ideally be guided by the same perceptions t...

This study aims to develop an online survey on the tourist perception of the visitor management system of the Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. As tourists are particularly sensitive to organisational issues related to the Park management, a bottom-up approach based on visitors’ opinions has been applied. First of all, a brief chronology has...

Urban green infrastructure provides city dwellers numerous benefits. Among them, cultural ecosystem services (CES) are distinguished by being easily perceived and essential for people and their well-being. However, not all CES are equally easy to perceive, resulting with some of the CES categories being weakly explored. Research on CES also rarely...

This study aims to conduct a survey of visitor reviews of the Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia to detect strengths and weaknesses of the park. In total, 15,673 reviews written in the period between 2007 and 2021 were scraped from the social media platform TripAdvisor. The research applies a comprehensive combination of multidimensional scali...

Green spaces are important parts of urban infrastructure. COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown periods around the world have confirmed benefits that people derive from using green spaces for their physical and mental health. Green spaces need to meet the needs of users so that people can use them and benefit over time. It is important to consider users'...

Even though water-related forest ecosystem services are important for forestry and water management sectors, they have different definitions and are regulated differently in each sector, which makes them poorly recognized. How stakeholders from two main sectors (forestry and water management) perceive the importance of water-related forest ecosyste...

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted our society, producing drastic changes in people’s routines and daily mobility, and putting public spaces under a new light. This paper starts with the premise that the use of urban forests and green spaces - where and for who they were available and accessible - increased, when social restrictions were m...

The study provides insight into the future of the forest-based bioeconomy sector in selected Southeast European (SEE) countries. It elicits experts´ understanding of forest-based bioeconomy, their opinion and level of agreement on future implementation of the bioeconomy concept by 2030/2050, through two-round Delphi. The study also provides the sta...

Forest Park Grmoščica is an important part of urban green infrastructure for the citizens of the western part of the city of Zagreb. To enhance the quality of management of the forest park to the satisfaction of its daily users, it is important to know their socio-demographic characteristics, visiting behaviour, recreational activities, as well as...

Urban green space (UGS) is an essential element in the urban environment, providing multiple ecosystem services as well as beneficial effects on physical and mental health. In a time of societal crisis these effects may be amplified, but ensuring that they are maintained requires effective planning and management – which is a complex challenge give...

Background and Objectives: Cultural ecosystem services of urban green spaces are increasingly important and often recognized as such by people living in urban areas. Qualitative studies on perception of cultural ecosystem services from urban green spaces are still rare. Previous studies addressed only certain types of urban green space and often on...

This paper examines the level of payment for ecosystem services (PES) concept implementation in the financing of water-related forest ecosystem services (ES) in the Republic of Croatia, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FB&H), the Republic of Slovenia, and the Republic of Serbia. The focus is on water-related forest ES recognised by the mil...

Background and Objectives: Urban forests and green space contribute to human wellbeing. Green infrastructure is recognized by the European Union as a planning tool that contributes to the implementation of many public policies, with urban forests and green space as its main building blocks. Croatia and Slovenia are young democracies and recent memb...

Carstvo gljiva najneistraženije je u živom svijetu zbog čega ga neki nazivaju i skrivenim carstvom. Pretpostavlja se da na Zemlji živi između 1,5 i 5 milijuna vrsta gljiva, dok je samo oko 100 000 vrsta gljiva opisano. Njihova je uloga u kopnenim ekosustavima na Zemlji nezamjenjiva; kao saprotrofi razgrađuju mrtvu organsku materiju (npr. lignin) na...

We analysed 10 years (2008–2017) of continuous eddy covariance (EC) CO2 flux measurements of net ecosystem exchange (NEE) in a young pedunculate oak forest in Croatia. Measured NEE was gap-filled and partitioned into gross primary productivity (GPP) and ecosystem reparation (RECO) using the online tool by Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in...

Background and Purpose: During the Erasmus+ project “Cooperation for Innovative Approach in Sustainable Forest Management Training (CIA2SFM)” a study of the existing vocational education and training (VET) and lifelong learning (LLL) programmes in the field of sustainable forest management (SFM) was conducted in Austria, Croatia and Slovenia. The a...

The EU Water Framework Directive aims to ensure restoration of Europe’s water bodies to “good ecological status” by 2027. Many Member States will struggle to meet this target, with around half of EU river catchments currently reporting below standard water quality. Diffuse pollution from agriculture represents a major pressure, affecting over 90% o...

The editors of South-east European forestry would like to express their sincere gratitude to the following reviewers for evaluating manuscripts in 2016. Their generous contributions of time and expertise are greatly appreciated.

In this paper the results of the first comprehensive study on perception of and satisfaction with urban forests and green space in seven Southeast European cities are presented. The aims of the paper are to analyse 1) citizen perceptions of the current state of urban forests and green space in their cities, 2) to what extent current urban forests a...

CAPABAL is the fourth Targeted Network approved by the COST Committee of Senior Officials. Targetd (policy-driven) Networks are COST Actions aiming at policy objectives – based on the Plan for Strategic Activities approved by the CS. All relevant key documents can be found on the COST Strategy page. CAPABAL aims to enhance the forest and natural r...

When we talk about risks for Mediterranean forests we put forest fires on first place and on second storm winds. On European level damages caused by forest fires make 16% and storm winds 51% of all forest damages (assessment for period 2005-2010) but for Mediterranean part the ratio of damages caused by forest fires is much more higher than one cau...

Ecosystem services including forest ecosystem services are hot topic globally among scientists and practitioners for decades. In Croatia there is a long tradition of discussing forest ecosystem services in terms of how to systemise them, assess and value, as well as how to secure payment for their provision. However, literature review showed discre...

The editors of South-east European forestry would like to express their sincere gratitude to the following reviewers for evaluating manuscripts in 2015. Their generous contributions of time and expertise are greatly appreciated. Reviewers who evaluated two or more manuscripts in 2015 are underlined.

Background and Purpose: Recent research on generation of digital surface models (DSMs) using image matching methods revealed a great potential of DSM application in forestry, especially in forest inventory. However, research dealing with DSM generation from digital aerial images are still lacking in Croatia. Therefore, the main objective of this st...

Background and Purpose: Recent research on generation of digital surface models (DSMs) using image matching methods revealed a great potential of DSM application in forestry, especially in forest inventory. However, research dealing with DSM generation from digital aerial images are still lacking in Croatia. Therefore, the main objective of this st...

The main aim was to develop models for predicting diameter at breast height (DBH), merchantable tree volume (V), and aboveground biomass (AGB) of individual black pine (Pinus nigra Arn.) trees grown in Sub-Mediterranean Croatian pure even-aged forests, which will be suitable for remote sensing based forest inventories. In total, eight variables obt...

At the beginning of 2008, within the scope of the project Forest products and harvesting technology agreed with Croatian Forests Ltd, Zagreb, we have set up a research of biopotential, energetic characteristics and harvesting technology and use of indigobush biomass. From the above mentioned project, in 2012, a separate project Biopotential and ene...

Background and Purpose: Recent natural disasters (ice-breaks, torrents, floods) that affected five Croatian counties caused significant damage on forest stands and forest infrastructure. Since in Croatia there is no common methodology for fast and reliable assessment of forest damage, the aim of this paper is to develop and present methodology for...

Policy-makers articulate a growing need for science-based policy advice that supports their decisions, especially infields that are dependent on scientific knowledge like natural resources or forestry. Publicly funded organizations, such as departmental research institutes, have been established in many countries to provide science-based policy advic...

Background and Purpose: The development of digital photogrammetry during the last twenty years has reopened the question of the possibility of its application in forest inventory. The focus of this paper is to research the potential of the manual method of digital photogrammetry for the estimation of diameter at breast height (DBH) at stand level....

Background and purpose: The aimof the paper is to describe and analyse the consultation process on forest biomass and sustainable forestmanagement in the context of renewable energy. Rather unique for the cross-border region of Croatian and Serbia the process was initiated within the EU project RoK-FOR [1] and based on a 'triple helix' principle- t...

In this article, several findings on socio-economic conditions derived from national reports and a web-based questionnaire are discussed and related to the changing role of forestry and the future forest policy development. A number of Central and South-eastern European countries taking part in a SEE-ERA-NET project ReForMan project (www.reforman.d...

Background and Purpose: In order to potentiate a valid comparison of forest stands, numerous indices were developed to express forest structure numerically. Each of those indices described a specific measured or calculated value. In the present study, three of the stand structure indicators, dependent on tree distance, were used: the aggregation in...

Urban forests provide multiple benefits whereas wood production is less important in comparison to benefits such as mitigating air pollution and heath island effect, providing fresh water or recreational opportunities to growing urban population (Konijnendijk 2000). However these benefits are usually non-marketable. There are several typologies of...

Constant development of modern remote sensing methods, primarily digital photogrammetry, opens new possibilities for their application in forest management, with the aim of faster, simpler and cheaper ways of collecting data. Since the remote sensing methods have not yet reached wider practical application in Croatian forestry, focus of our work wa...

Background and Purpose: National forest programs have been promoted by the international forest policy sphere as a preferred form of policy process by which the sustainable forest management should be reached on national level. As such, it has received a lot of attention in the international legislation and has been important part of the forest pol...

Background and purpose: The main goal of this paper is to inform forestry community about the latest developments in digital photogrammetry, as well as to present its possible application in forest management. For this purpose, the current state of technological development of the main tools of digital photogrammetry (digital aerophotogrammetric ca...

This paper presents results of research project "Defining of values and possibilities of use for non-wood forests 'products and services financed by Croatian forests ltd. and executed by Croatian Forest Research Institute in cooperation with Forest District Karlovac (2005-2010). Non-wood forests' products were defined as group of forest fruits and...

Net Ecosystem Productivity (NEP) and Net Ecosystem Carbon Balance (NECB) of young Pedunculate oak (Quercus roburL.) stand were investigated. Two independent methods for assessing NEP were used: a) micrometeorological method of Eddy covariance (EC) and, b) combination of biometric method for assessing Net Primary Productivity (NPP) and periodic soil...

Many governments express a growing need for having a science that is "usable", which means that research results should be useful for practical application. In Serbia and Croatia current strategies and laws addressing science and research see public research institutes as organizations with activities primarily oriented toward public interest, in a...

Background and Purpose: Croatia is one of the countries with a long practice of payments for environmental forests’ services (PES). Following the implementation of green tax in Croatia and present European trends, the aim of this research is to investigate state of economic mechanisms and possible need for change or adaptation to the new trends. Ma...

Background and Purpose: It is possible to monitor and study the natural growth and development of the forest ecosystems in the example of protected forest stands, which were excluded from management, and which are not under a negative influence of human activity. Therefore the aim of the research through the repeated measurements is to estimate the...

In this article, several findings on socio-economic conditions derived from national reports and a web-based questionnaire are discussed and related to the changing role of forestry and the future forest policy development. A number of Central and South-eastern European countries taking part in a SEE-ERA-NET project ReForMan project (www.reforman.d...

State of private forests and needs of private forest owners have not been in the focus of forest economics and policies research in the region of South-Eastern Europe so far. The past socio-political regime used to prioritize public property and management of private forest was therefore neglected for a long time resulting in degradation of forests...

Pedunculate Oak is, in terms of economy, one of our main tree species. The research of oak dieback, in light of expected climate changes, is therefore of great importance. Evaluation of climate change usually takes into account changes in average values of climatic variables over long period of time. For forest ecosystems, aside average values of c...

In this study the focus is on the role of local communities in the management of protected areas with the expectation that without the cooperation and assistance of local communities achieving biodiversity conservation in places where the land and resources are fundamental to supporting people's livelihoods will be less successful than if the local...

Nowadays under the influence of climate changes it becomes clearer that forestry profession needs to take advantage from multifunctional character of resource that manages using all its products and services on sustainable way (National forest policy and strategy, NN 120/03). This process needs to be welcomed in private forest sector as well. Besid...

Background and Purpose: The estimation of forest woody biomass has a significant role in forestry due to several reasons. One of the reasons is that good woody biomass estimation is important for the planning of forest woody assortments production, for main commercial roundwood assortment and for assortments like »waste wood« or »recovered wood« as...

In an increasingly urbanized world more and more people are turning to our forests and woodland for recreation and tourism. Planning and providing for this growing demand poses challenges that need to be addressed by managers and designers alike. Based on a study of forest recreation from across Europe, the editors bring together the expertise of m...

Private forests and private forest ownership has to be reconsidered under the light of changed relationships and the ongoing process of restitution. State of private forestry in Croatia as one of the transition countries, is characterized by small property size, huge number of owners and modest level of organisation. At the same time this sector is...

Protected areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina are mainly established within the existing forest management areas causing a number of cross-sectoral conflicts. In order to modify the role of forest sector and achieve sustainable forest management, it is indispensable to determine the characteristics of the visitors to protected areas but also the reason...

The preference of tourists for forests was surveyed during two summer seasons on the island of Kor~ula. The respondents were Croatian and foreign tourists who chose the Croatian coast as a holiday destination. The island is situated in the Central Dalmatian archipelago south of Split and north of Dubrovnik. It is a renowned tourist resort that achi...

The paper presents a way to determine a proposal for improving existing models for evaluation of timber assortments, which are used by forestry operative units. The incentive for the investigation of this theme were the frequent reports from forestry operative units on inconsistency of the planned values of assortments with the values of assortment...