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Background Plants alter their environment in a number of ways. With correct management, plant communities can positively impact soil degradation processes such as surface erosion and shallow landslides. However, there are major gaps in our understanding of physical and ecological processes on hillslopes, and the application of research to restoration and engineering projects.Scope To identify the key issues of concern to researchers and practitioners involved in designing and implementing projects to mitigate hillslope instability, we organized a discussion during the From this discussion, ten key issues were identified, considered as the kernel of future studies concerning the impact of vegetation on slope stability and erosion processes. Each issue is described and a discussion at the end of this paper addresses how we can augment the use of ecological engineering techniques for mitigating slope instability. Conclusions We show that through fundamental and applied research in related fields (e.g., soil formation and biogeochemistry, hydrology and microbial ecology), reliable data can be obtained for use by practitioners seeking adapted solutions for a given site. Through fieldwork, accessible databases, modelling and collaborative projects, awareness and acceptance of the use of plant material in slope restoration projects should increase significantly, particularly in the civil and geotechnical communities.

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Understanding tree susceptibility to wind damage is central to natural disturbance and succession studies. Susceptibility depends on the wind loads experienced by trees and their ability to resist these loads. In this study, we investigated the wind force or "drag" acting on the crowns of juvenile specimens of three hardwood species common to northwestern North America, black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa Torr. & A. Gray), red alder (Alnus rubra Bong.), and paper birch (Betula papyrifera Marsh.). Ten freshly cut crowns of each species were exposed to wind speeds from 4 to 20 m/s in a wind tunnel. At 20 m/s, streamlining reduced the frontal area to 28% of its initial value for black cottonwood, 37% for red alder, and 20% for paper birch. Crown drag coefficients calculated using frontal area in still air varied with wind speed. At 20 m/s they ranged from 0.15 to 0.22 for these species. Drag was proportional to the product of mass and wind speed, and to the product of wind speed squared and wind-speed-specific frontal area. Removing branches by whole-branch pruning had little effect on drag per unit branch mass. To further investigate the effect of leaf size, we also used smaller samples of bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum Pursh) and trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.). Whole-crown drag coefficients did not vary systematically with leaf size, but drag per unit of crown mass increased with leaf size. Bigleaf maple had a higher drag per unit of crown mass than other species.

Estimating the wind force or drag acting on tree crowns is central to understanding both the chronic effects of wind and the calculation of critical wind speed in windthrow prediction models. The classical drag equation is problematic for porous, flexible tree crowns whose frontal area declines as wind speeds increase and branches streamline. Juvenile crowns of three morphologically different conifers, western redcedar (Thuja plicata Donn ex D. Don), western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla (Raf.) Sarg.), and lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. ex Loud.), were exposed to wind speeds from 4 to 20 m/s in a wind tunnel. At 20 m/s, streamlining reduced the frontal area by 54% for redcedar, 39% for hemlock, and 36% for lodgepole pine. Crown drag coefficients calculated using frontal area in still air varied with wind speed. At 20 m/s, they were 0.22, 0.47, and 0.47 for these species, respectively. Drag was proportional to the product of mass and wind speed and also to the product of wind speed squared and wind speed specific frontal area. Lodgepole pine and redcedar had lower drag per unit of branch mass than did hemlock. Removing branches by pruning had little effect on drag per unit branch mass.