Economic Evaluation of Water Supplying Function of a Mountain-forest Area of Turkey: Forest Rotation Impacts

Background: Mountain-Forest ecosystems provide essential services within the economic system of the region and perhaps the country. These natural resources, which have many apparent or not apparent functions, are facing economic development pressures in recent years. The benefits of water provided by mountain-forest ecosystems to the downstream basin and the benefits of eliminating the adverse conditions created by rainwater are economically valuable. However, they are benefits that decision-makers often do not consider. With quality and rational forest management, these benefits can be gained much more publicly. Forest rotation, silviculture studies, economic value determination, and rational forest management taking all these into account can provide this. Methods: The Faustmann approach made essential contributions to natural resource management and especially to the economic analysis of mountain-forest ecosystems in the middle of the 19th century. Highlighting the importance of the forest area's regeneration process, Faustman gave important opinions to decision-makers about when the timber value will be suitable for rotation. Hartman developed the Faustman approach by stating that the forest area has not only timber value but also non-timber values. In this study, the function of providing water resources from the Uludag National Park (UNP) resource values examined both approaches; and three models were created. Results: The basic model where only the timber value is taken into account is the model in which the impact of the rain flow regulation service on the UNP rotation is analyzed, and all forest water services are taken into account. Here, it was taken into account that the increased water quality value due to the forest will increase by 10%. According to the first model results, the UNP must be subjected to rotation at intervals of 44 years. UNP reaches its current net value of 956 USD/Ha in 44 years. In the second model, in which the service of eliminating problems such as floods, landslides, and landslides may occur in settlements below the basin due to the retention of rainwater in forest soil, there was no effect on the rotation period. However, the stand value increased to 976 USD/year per hectare. The third model assumed that the water quality value increased by 10%; It was concluded that the rotation increased to 107 years, and the stand value per hectare this year is 147 006 USD/Year. Conclusions: The study has made important contributions to the literature. It integrates the natural resource value determination studies with the forest rotation system. Also, essential implications are made for regional decision-makers and UNP forest management. It was concluded that the necessity of increasing the business investments made to the UNP is how important the allocation, use, and development decisions of the UNP are.

Carbon Footprint of Thermal Energy Production from Poplar Short-Rotation Coppice Plantations

The use of agroforestry biomass represents a relevant aspect in the world debate on the issue of reducing climate-altering gases in the atmosphere. One of the possible sources of wood biomass production is represented by poplar SRC plantations. In the present work, the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of the entire supply chain of four different cutting shifts (2, 3, 4, and 5 years) have been evaluated according to the IPCC method. In relation to the rotation cycle, four biomass harvesting systems were considered with a different level of mechanization. It was considered that the biomass produced by the plantations was used in a biomass plant for heating a public building. The environmental impact of 1 GJ of heat energy produced by the various forest rotation plants was assessed considering the entire life cycle, from the field stage to the thermal energy production. The results were compared with the production of the same quantity of thermal energy using a diesel boiler. The comparison between the two systems has shown that the production and use of biomass to generate thermal energy can reduce the Global Warming Potential by more than 70% compared to the use of fossil fuels.

ROTATION FORESTS AND RANDOM FOREST CLASSIFIERS FOR MONITORING OF VEGETATION IN PAYS DE BREST (FRANCE)

Remote sensing is a potentially very useful source of information for spatial monitoring of natural or cultivated vegetation. The latest advances, in particular the arrival of new image acquisition programs, are changing the temporal approach to monitoring vegetation. The latest European satellites launched, delivering an image every 5 days for each point on the globe, allow the end of a growing season to be monitored. The main objective of this work is to identify and map the vegetation in the Pays de Brest area by using a multi sensors stacking of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites data via Random Forest, Rotation forests (RoF) and Canonical Correlation Forests (CCFs). RoF and CCF create diverse base learners using data transformation and subset features. Twenty four radar images and optical dataa representing different dates in 2017 were processed in time series stacks. The results of RoF and CCF were compared with the ones of RF.

Optimization of the main tillage in the grey forest rotation of the Predkamye region of the Republic of Tatarstan

In order to optimize the tillage system by minimizing basic tillage, eight basic tillage options for basic field crops were explored between 2011 and 2015. The highest crop yields were obtained under the fine tillage option (SSC-3) with periodic deep loosening. The yield increase compared to plowing (control) was 0.24-0.33 t/ha.

Feasibility of wood production according to productivity class and rotation criteria

The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of forest rotation on the technical and economic feasibility of eucalyptus wood production for charcoal, in different productivity classes. Data came from Eucalyptus stands whose area was stratified into three classes of productivity: high, medium, and low. To each class, a different criterion of forest rotation was applied, as follows: age of maximum productivity, economic rotation age, single harvest age, and no technical parameter. Analyses of economic feasibility and production were performed for a 21-year planning horizon. For rotation without a technical parameter, a simulation by the Monte Carlo method was performed. For all rotation criteria, feasibility was observed for high- and medium-productivity classes, and unfeasibility for the low-productivity class. For rotation without a technical parameter, there is no chance for the project to be unfeasible. Wood production viability for charcoal under the studied conditions depends on the productivity class, for any rotation criterion adopted. Rotation criterion influences profitability, whose definition, according to productivity class, contributes to forest production maximization and to the economic return of the project, under the studied conditions.