The importance of trust has been widely acknowledged as a major antecedent and a constitutive element of information exchange in policy networks. The ultimate objective of the present article is to understand whether and how trust is a factor explaining patterns of limited information exchange between forestry and nature conservation actors in forest policy networks in Europe.

In recent decades, Serbia has been undergoing a period of post-socialist transition that has significantly altered the value system underlying spatial development due to alteration of ownership frameworks and land use rights. In consequence, issues have arisen of how to strike a balance between the various interests involved in the distribution of spatial resources and how to control the outcomes of public policies. Land use planning has been identified as an efficient instrument for implementing the public policy value framework.

Research Highlights: Forest conservation policies can drive land-use change to other land-use types. In multifunctional landscapes, forest conservation policies will therefore impact on other functions delivered by the landscape. Finding the best pattern of land use requires considering these interactions. Background and Objectives: Population growth continues to drive the development of land for urban purposes. Consequently, there is a loss of other land uses, such as agriculture and forested lands. Efforts to conserve one type of land use will drive more change onto other land uses.

Forests across the U.S. and U.S. affiliated islands of the Caribbean and Pacific constitute rich and dynamic social-ecological systems that, while heterogeneous in many ways, share certain characteristics and trends that underscore the utility of sustainability assessments that go beyond single jurisdictional efforts. This paper summarizes a recent effort to assess the sustainability of tropical island forests of and politically affiliated with the U.S.

This study analyzed the perceptions of four stakeholder groups (forest landowners, private forest consultants, forest management researchers or educators, and federal or state agency foresters), regarding their management practices and preferred geographic growing conditions of loblolly pine in Virginia by combining AHP (analytical hierarchy process) and regression modeling. By ranking the importance of different geographical conditions for managing loblolly pine, we aimed to identify ways to support loblolly growth as a potential feedstock for biofuel generation.

Forest fragmentation and degradation are a problem in many areas of the world and are a cause for concern to land managers. Similarly, countries interested in curtailing climate change have a keen interest in monitoring forest degradation. Traditional methods for measuring forested landscape pattern dynamics with maps made from classified satellite imagery fall short with respect to the compatibility of their forest definitions with information needs. In addition, they are not easily amenable to interpretation using tools like confidence intervals derived from survey sampling theory.

Forest land managers rely on predictions of tree mortality generated from fire behavior models to identify stands for post-fire salvage and to design fuel reduction treatments that reduce mortality. A key challenge in improving the accuracy of these predictions is selecting appropriate wind and fuel moisture inputs. Our objective was to evaluate postfire mortality predictions using the Forest Vegetation Simulator Fire and Fuels Extension (FVS-FFE) to determine if using representative fire-weather data would improve prediction accuracy over two default weather scenarios.

In fire-adapted conifer forests of the Western U.S., changing land use has led to increased forest densities and fuel conditions partly responsible for increasing the extent of high-severity wildfires in the region. In response, land managers often use mechanical thinning treatments to reduce fuels and increase overstory structural complexity, which can help improve stand resilience and restore complex spatial patterns that once characterized these stands. The outcomes of these treatments can vary greatly, resulting in a large gradient in aggregation of residual overstory trees.

The recreational value of forests in mountain areas creates significant potential for local growth. Indeed, in recent decades, it has been noted that there has been an increase in the popularity of forests recognized as tourism destinations with a strong recreational importance. In the forest area of Metsovo, the locals are aware of the role of tourism in local growth, and it is considered, along with forestry and livestock farming, as the major critical advantage for sustainable development.

Land-use change results from the decisions of diverse actors in response to economic and political contexts. Identification of underlying decision-making processes is key to understanding land-use patterns, anticipating trends, and designing effective environmental governance mechanisms. Here, we use a scenario-based decision game to examine hypothetical land-use decisions among four groups of rural producers in the municipalities of Sinop, Guarantã do Norte and Novo Progresso in the Brazilian Amazon.

In recent decades, Serbia has been undergoing a period of post-socialist transition that has significantly altered the value system underlying spatial development due to alteration of ownership frameworks and land use rights. In consequence, issues have arisen of how to strike a balance between the various interests involved in the distribution of spatial resources and how to control the outcomes of public policies. Land use planning has been identified as an efficient instrument for implementing the public policy value framework.

In 2012, the Argentine government expropriated 51% of the shares of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales S.A. (YPF) from the Spanish company Repsol S.A. The YPF was nationalized without prior compensation, violating Argentina’s own laws and, consequently, the institutional framework in force in the country. As a consequence, the country’s reputation deteriorated and, although there were several contacts with multinational enterprises to become YPF’s new partner, the investment climate was affected, making it really difficult to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).