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The climate regulation effects of forests have been extensively studied. Many evaluation methods exist to assess the climate regulation service on regional and global scales. However, the processes driving local scale effects are poorly understood. We established a new method, which combined the cooling effects of forest and cooling costs to assess the value of climate regulation of a local scale forest. The inhabitable value of cooling service of forests for the farming area and built-up area and the payable value only for the built-up area were considered separately. The climate regulation effects of a forest in Fanggan, a mountainous village of East China, were studied. In 2014, the economic value of the cooling effects of the forest was 3727 USD per ha per year. In the inhabitable area, only about 10% of this amount was practically payable in the built-up area for humans. This method provides a new way of incorporating cooling effects into climate regulation services.

The land disturbed by open-pit oil sands mining must be restored to support the survival and growth of native boreal plants. Because tailings sand and sodic shale overburden are commonly used as an underlying parent substrate that is capped by boreal forest cover soils, the soil pH in reclamation sites is often higher compared with undisturbed boreal forest soil. Sulfur is a major byproduct of oil sands refining and could potentially be used as an amendment to lower the soil pH on reclamation sites. In this study, we examined the effects of soil pH and elemental sulfur on growth and physiological responses in Saskatoon berry and beaked hazelnut seedlings. We found that elemental sulfur was effective in lowering soil pH. However, addition of elemental sulfur to a forest soil of pH 5.7 lowered the soil pH to around 3, which impaired the growth and physiological performance of both plant species. The addition of 5 and 25 g kg−1 elemental sulfur to the pH 8.5 soil did not substantially improve the examined growth and physiological parameters in Saskatoon berry and beaked hazelnut seedlings. Further, excess addition of elemental sulfur in high pH soil could reduce the uptake of nitrogen, phosphorus, and calcium in Saskatoon berry. The results demonstrate that the amount of sulfur applied to the soil would need to be carefully determined for different soil types and pH levels to avoid potential toxicity effects.