John A. Stanturf

Estonian University of Life Sciences | EMU · Institute of Forestry and Rural Engineering

Wood production in peatland forests is often associated with management of site hydrology that aims to improve soil moisture status and stand growth. Silvicultural outcomes of ditching activities vary greatly among drained sites, therefore new data and modelling approaches are necessary for better understanding of forest growth dynamics on a tree-l...

Objectives of the Study Many actors globally are attempting to reverse deforestation and forest degradation, combat climate change, and conserve biodiversity, describing their actions with a wide range of often confusing terms. We sought to clarify how seven common terms and concepts are used in the scientific literature, and how to use them more e...

Many actors globally are attempting to reverse deforestation and forest degradation, combat climate change, and conserve biodiversity, describing their actions with a wide range of often confusing terms. We sought to clarify how seven common terms and concepts are used in the scientific literature, and how to use them more effectively to support fo...

Forests and forest landscapes, characterised by dominant forest areas with other embedded land uses, fulfil multiple essential ecosystem services (ES). These include (i) provisioning services such as the provision of food, raw materials, freshwater and medicinal resources;(ii) regulating services such as carbon sequestration and storage for climate...

Conservation and restoration of degraded arid lands in Mongolia depend upon protecting the remnant forests from further degradation and restoring de-nuded sites. Worsening environmental conditions, driven by climate change, intensify the need for active restoration. Haloxylon ammodendron (C.A. Mey.) Bunge. is a candidate plant species for restorati...

We studied the eff ects of thinning on the tree growth and stand characteristics of pine plantations (Pinus sylvestris) in northern Mongolia. The study sites are located in the Tujiin Nars area, where 18-and 20-year-old plantations were thinned in 2016 and 2017, respectively. In each site, three plots in thinned and an unthinned (control) plot were...

Deforestation in Ghana has led to a forest loss of almost 20% from 9,924,000 ha in 1990 to 7,986,000 ha today. To restore degraded lands, Forest Landscape Restoration has become a critical approach globally. This study was conducted in Ghana focusing on the examples of two forest landscape restoration projects in the Pamu Berekum Forest Reserve: 10...

The study area is in the Järvselja Training and Experimental Forest Centre, Estonia. The conservation of Järvselja old-growth forest started in 1924 when the area was excluded from all management activities and left to natural development. The aim of this study is to analyse the methods for calculating single tree height, tree stem lateral surface...

Climate, a primary driver for fire activity, is important for fire management. Climate information is necessary for understanding and predicting fire regimes, seasonal and inter-annual variability, and future trends. Most wildfires are up to tens of kilometers in size, while global climate models usually have horizontal resolutions of hundreds of k...

Information on the initial effects of a novel coronavirus, COVID-19, during 2020 on forests in Canada and the United States was derived from existing published studies and reports, news items, and policy briefs, amplified by information from interviews with key informants. Actions taken by governments and individuals to control the spread of the vi...

Desertification of the semi-arid steppe of Mongolia is advancing very rapidly, motivating afforestation efforts. The “Green Belt” joint project (Government of Mongolia and Republic of Korea), which aims to mitigate soil degradation and develop agroforestry activities through the planting of a forest shelterbelt, is one such response. In these plant...

Comprehensive description and quantification of stand structure is needed for managing or maintaining forests as complex systems. The tree position and diameter based structural complexity index SCI was used to quantify the structural heterogeneity of forest stands in Estonia. The aims of the study were to determine if SCI is related to the convent...

In light of the difficulties in stand volume estimation of natural forests, we analyzed height–diameter relationships and derived a set of height estimation equations for volume estimation for naturally developing forest ecosystems, using the Järvselja old-growth and the Laeva commercial forest in Estonia as a case study. This contribution presents...

Living in a time of continuous crises, the effects of climate change, social unrest, and military conflicts are apparent at every turn. The loss and degradation of natural systems is an existential crisis for humanity; reversing the destruction is urgent international policy. The novel corona virus pandemic and accompanying global economic recessio...

Soil ecology and restoration ecology are offshoots of the broader discipline of ecology and have essentially developed and operated as separate subdisciplines. Although restoration ecologists have long appreciated soils as important to the practice of restoring ecosystems, there has been relatively little overlap between the disciplines apart from...

The direct human impact on terrestrial ecosystems is extensive, and only the most inaccessible regions free of human influence. Deforestation, desertification, biodiversity loss, loss of productivity potential, soil erosion, and pollution are ongoing processes associated with landscape degradation. Reversing degradation requires time and consistent...

Soils are natural bodies, formed by the state factors of physical, chemical, and biological processes operating on geologic parent material over time. Long recognized for their importance to agriculture and forestry, the role of soils in natural systems has been underappreciated. Soils provide important ecosystem services, determined by their natur...

Tree planting has been widely touted as an inexpensive way to meet multiple international environmental goals for mitigating climate change, reversing landscape degradation and restoring biodiversity restoration. The Bonn Challenge and New York Declaration on Forests, motivated by widespread deforestation and forest degradation, call for restoring...

In this review and synthesis paper, we review the resilience of secondary forests to climate change through the lenses of ecosystem legacies and landscape diversity. Ecosystem legacy of secondary forests was categorized as continuous forest, non-continuous forest, reassembled after conversion to other land uses, and novel reassembled forests of non...

Growth of CO2 concentration level has strong interactions with forests. Forests are able to sequester carbon (C) through photosynthesis and can help to mitigate the effects of climate warming, as well as to reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Drought and other extreme weather conditions play a key role in ecosystem functioning and the C...

Research Highlights: The global Forest Landscape Restoration ambitions could be impaired by projects that ignore key principles such as the engagement of local communities in decision making and implementation, equitable benefit sharing, and monitoring for adaptive management. This entails the danger of continued degradation, disappointed local sta...

Forest ecosystems are shaped by disturbances and functional features of vegetation recovery after disturbances. There is considerable variation in basic disturbance characteristics, magnitude, severity, and intensity. Disturbance legacies provide possible explanations for ecosystem resilience. The impact (length and strength) of the pool of ecosyst...

Almost half of the total organic carbon (C) in terrestrial ecosystems is stored in forest soils. By altering rates of input or release of C from soils, forest management activities can influence soil C stocks in forests. In this review, we synthesize current evidence regarding the influences of 13 common forest management practices on forest soil C...

While the global restoration movement is rapidly gaining momentum, understanding the concept and benefits of forest and landscape restoration (FLR) is paramount to safeguarding the natural capital of Canada's forests. In the face of increasing cumulative effects, we investigated the opportunities for scaling up FLR efforts in Canadian forests. The...

A total of 17 landscapes in nine countries with Bonn Challenge commitments (three each in Africa, Asia and Latin America) were analysed as “snapshots” of FLR implementation. Following a common methodology developed by the IUFRO Team, local forest scientists selected landscapes with past and ongoing restoration activities. Local teams collected data...

The need for large-scale forest landscape restoration has been increasingly recognized, with significant political support globally and locally. Greater investments have been initiated for restoring landscapes through forest protection, tree planting, and other measures as well as livelihood improvements. These efforts seek to achieve the restorati...

Diverse environmental gradients in Central Asia and Mongolia, from high mountain forests to semi-desert lowlands salinized by past agriculture and water withdrawals, pose challenges to restoring degraded forests and landscapes. Technical approaches in dryland forestry and agroforestry methods are available to overcome these challenges, but to be fu...

The need for large-scale forest landscape restoration has been increasingly recognized, with significant political support globally and locally. Greater investments have been initiated for restoring landscapes through forest protection, tree planting, and other measures as well as livelihood improvements. These efforts seek to achieve the restorati...

A large area of Estonian hemiboreal forest is recovering from clear-cut harvesting and changing carbon (C) balance of the stands. However, there is a lack of information about C-source/sink relationships during recovery of such stands. The eddy covariance technique was used to estimate C-status through net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of CO2 in two sta...

Boreal and temperate forests cover a large part of the Earth. Forest ecosystems are a key focus for research because of their role in the carbon (C) balance and cycle. Increasing atmospheric temperatures, different disturbances (fire, storm and insects) and forest management (clear-cutting) will change considerably the C status of forest ecosystems...

Over the past two decades, the United States government conducted detailed analyses of the potential of a biobased national energy strategy that produced four unified studies, namely the 2005–2016 US Billion-Ton Study and updates. With each effort, better perspective was gained on the biophysical potential of biomass and the economic availability o...

Key message: There is no one-size-fits-all way to successfully implement forest landscape restoration (FLR). Complex socio-ecological systems present challenges and opportunities that can best be met with a systematic framework for designing, planning, steering, and monitoring FLR projects to meet diverse needs. Project cycle management is an itera...

Potential risk for disruption to supply of raw materials for bio-based industrial sites from natural disasters has received little attention in site evaluations even though these risks may be significant. Biomass supply in the form of roundwood, forest and agricultural residues, or dedicated short rotation plantations are especially subject to disr...

This Occasional Paper is the result of a large collaborative effort by fire scientists and practitioners who believe that learning to co-exist with changing fire activity is not only possible but necessary if we, as a global society, are to adapt to climate change and keep our natural and cultural landscapes healthy, resilient, and safe for the nex...

The number of global initiatives for forest restoration, and the scope of these initiatives, continues to increase. An important tool for meeting objectives of these global initiatives is reforestation, achieved by natural processes or by tree planting. Worldwide, organizations are challenged to most efficiently and effectively direct resources to...

Renewed interest in non-native Eucalyptus species for planting in the southern US has been spurred by projections suggesting they are more productive than the widely cultured Pinus species, by warming temperatures, and by attempts to identify frost-tolerant species as well as developing genetically modified Eucalyptus for frost tolerance. In additi...

In the Baltic States region, anthropogenic disturbances at different temporal and spatial scales mostly determine dynamics and development phases of forest ecosystems. We reviewed the state and condition of hemiboreal forests of the Baltic States region and analyzed species composition of recently established and permanent forest (PF). Agricultural...

Adaptive Forest Management and Forest Landscape Restoration do not contradict – ecosystem integrityand health are benefits and central goals in both concepts, and thus can beintegrated. The Adaptive Measures concept can be helpful in streamlining and focusing existingconcepts on forest adaptation and restoration as well as to help forest restoratio...

Assessing the economic supply of biomass in a geospatial context while accounting for risk from natural disasters was studied. Risk levels were estimated from a component of factors which included: population density, road density, federal ownership, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ecoregions, and Presidential Disaster Declarations. The Presid...

The main tenets of forest health management are to simultaneously maintain productivity and all native species over time, which will in turn maintain ecosystem services provided by the forest. Natural disturbances oppose the stable flow of materials, while removals of timber short-circuit the flow of organic materials to the deadwood pool and reduc...

Restoring the estimated 1 billion hectares of degraded forests must consider future climate accompanied by novel ecosystems. Transformational restoration can play a key role in adaptation to climate change but it is conceptually the most divergent from contemporary approaches favoring native species and natural disturbance regimes. Here, we review...

Short rotation woody crops (SRWCs) are key renewable feedstocks for the emerging bioeconomy. A critical step in developing a bioeconomy is defining suitable regions for commercial SRWC activities. The goal of this study was to estimate the obtainable yield in mean annual increment and economic returns on investment for Populus deltoides and Populus...

Terrestrial ecosystems are globally under threat of loss or degradation. To compensate for the impacts incurred by loss and/or degradation, efforts to restore ecosystems are being undertaken. These efforts often focus on restoring the aboveground plant community with the expectation that the belowground microbial community will follow suit. This ‘F...

The use of renewable resources is important to the developing bioenergy economy and short rotation woody crops (SRWC) are key renewable feedstocks. A necessary step in advancing SRWC is defining regions suitable for SRWC commercial activities and assessing the relative economic viability among suitable regions. The goal of this study was to assess...

Short rotation woody crops (SRWCs) are key renewable feedstocks for the emerging bioeconomy. A critical step in developing a bioeconomy is defining suitable regions for commercial SRWC activities. The goal of this study was to estimate the obtainable yield in mean annual increment and economic returns on investment for Populus deltoides and Populus...

Recognising the challenge of implementing these high-level targets and initiatives, and realising that obtaining results on the ground will confront many context-specific questions, a team of scientists from relevant IUFRO units has prepared this practitioner’s guide to Implementing Forest Landscape Restoration. The guide follows from, and builds u...

Restoring forest landscapes is critical in the face of continued global forest loss and degradation. In this article, we explore some challenges underlying the delivery of global commitments to restore forest landscapes. We propose that three fundamental questions need to be resolved upfront for the effective implementation of Forest Landscape Rest...

The condition of forest ecosystems depends on the temporal and spatial pattern of management interventions and natural disturbances. Remnants of previous conditions persisting after disturbances, or ecosystem legacies, collectively comprise ecosystem memory. Ecosystem memory in turn contributes to resilience and possibilities of ecosystem reorganiz...

Afforestation on reclaimed mining areas has high ecological and economic importance. However, ecosystems established on post-mining substrate can become vulnerable due to climate variability. We used tree-ring data and dendrochronological techniques to study the relationship between climate variables and annual growth of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestri...

Soil erosion, loss of productivity potential, biodiversity loss, water shortage, and soil and water pollution are ongoing processes that decrease or degrade provisioning (e.g., biomass, freshwater) and regulating (e.g., carbon sequestration, soil quality) ecosystem services. Therefore, developing environmental technologies that maximize these servi...

Short-rotation woody crops are an integral component of regional and national energy portfolios, as well as providing essential ecosystem services such as biomass supplies, carbon sinks, clean water, and healthy soils. We review recent USDA Forest Service Research and Development efforts from the USDA Biomass Research Centers on the provisioning of...

The report by Naudts et al. concludes that forest management in Europe during the last 260 years has failed to result in net CO2 removal from the atmosphere. The authors have reached this conclusion through their failure to consider a key factor in their otherwise comprehensive analysis. The authors present an analysis of net carbon emissions from...

The Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic that has stricken thousands of people in the three West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea highlights the lack of adaptive capacity in post-conflict countries. The scarcity of health services in particular renders these populations vulnerable to multiple interacting stressors including food...

Tomorrow’s forests face extreme pressures from contemporary climate change, invasive pests, and anthropogenic demands for other land uses. These pressures, collectively, demand land managers to reassess current and potential forest management practices. We discuss three considerations, functional restoration, assisted migration, and bioengineering,...

The global magnitude of degraded and deforested areas is best approached by restoring landscapes. Heightened international perception of the importance of forests and trees outside forests (e.g., woodlands, on farms) demands new approaches to future landscapes. The current need for forest restoration is two billion ha; most opportunities are mosaic...

Fire is a significant agent for the development of boreal and hemiboreal forests, altering soil and light conditions, affecting seedbanks, and removing seed trees. Burned areas should be managed with care, as inappropriate techniques prolong the regeneration period and reduce the diversity and resilience of stands to disturbances. To study the effe...

Post-mining restoration sites often develop novel ecosystems as soil conditions are completely new and ecosystem assemblage can be spontaneous even on afforested sites. This study presents results from long-term monitoring and evaluation of an afforested oil-shale quarry in Estonia. The study is based on chronosequence data of soil and vegetation a...