Effects of environmental factors and forest management on landscape-scale forest storm damage in Turkey

Abstract

& Key message Windstorms have recently caused noteworthy destruction across the Northern forests of Turkey. The intensive forest management practices applied for more than 60+ years may unknowingly have resulted in windsensitive forests in the region. After a storm, the forest service salvages the losses, but no further precaution is taken against future storms. To our knowledge, there has not been any research looking into the cumulative effects of environmental factors on storm damage in Turkish forests. Maxent, which is an ecological niche model, might help decisionmakers in developing forest management strategies against storms given its ease of use, known successful performance, and flexible variable evaluation approach. This study revealed that management preferences were mainly responsible for forest storm damage in Kastamonu Province, Turkey. & Context Excessive wind cause serious damages to individual trees and forest stands. When unintentionally coupled with the forest management preferences, catastrophic levels of damage might be unavoidable. & Aims The main objective was to assess the environmental factors contributing to the impact of a strong windstorm that occurred between March 14 and 15, 2013 and resulted in 1.5-million m 3 timber losses in the Kastamonu Regional Directorate of Forestry. & Methods Maximum entropy modeling (Maxent) and geographic information systems (GIS) were used to evaluate the factors contributing to the forest damage. & Results Stand type, diameter class, and elevation were the most important variables affecting the level of wind damage. The pure and mixed coniferous stands were the hardest hit when compared with the deciduous stands. The damage increased as the density of forest roads grew. & Conclusion It was concluded that windstorms pose serious threats to Turkish forests. Storm damage risks must therefore be integrated into forest management. In order to better understand the environmental factors contributing to the destructive effects of windstorms in forests, it would be best to focus on the telltale signs pointing the wrong-doing in forest management preferences at larger environmental scale rather than looking for reasons behind the occurrences of scattered small-scale damage.

Review Article: Wind and storm damage: From Meteorology to Impacts

“…Elevation was useful in about a third of the studies, and was particularly useful when the study area was very large, encompassing an entire region, state or country (Díaz-Yáñez et al, 2019;Kramer et al, 2001;Torun and Altunel, 2020;Mayer et al, 2005) or when there was a strong gradient of elevation, preferably reaching above 900 m asl (Krejci et al, 2018;Pasztor et al, 2015;Torun and Altunel, 2020;Kramer et al, 2001;Mayer et al, 2005). This relevance assessment for elevation is new to our best of knowledge.…”

“…This relevance assessment for elevation is new to our best of knowledge. The trend in the correlation between elevation and forest damage was both found to be inconclusive, to be both positive (Díaz-Yáñez et al, 2019;Krejci et al, 2018;Pasztor et al, 2015;) and negative (Mayer et al, 2005;Albrecht et al, 2013), or only present for a certain range of elevation (Albrecht et al, 2013;Torun and Altunel, 2020;). While there is an expectation for an increase in forest damage with higher altitudes due to an increase in wind speed (Machar et al, 2014), diversity of trends can stem from the involvement of other topographic indices that may contain the similar https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2022-159 Preprint.…”

Enhancement of Boring Vibrations Based on Cascaded Dual-Domain Features Extraction for Insect Pest Agrilus planipennis Monitoring

“…Forestry aims to provide optimal economic gain while ensuring the continuous provision of ecological, social, and cultural services [2]. However, biotic, abiotic, and anthropogenic factors threaten this sustainability [3]. Among all biotic factors, tree pests and pathogens are a major and increasing threat to the integrity of forest ecosystems [4].…”

Prediction of Potential Geographic Distribution of Endangered Relict Tree Species <i>Dipteronia sinensis</i> in China Based on MaxEnt and GIS

“…However, MaxEnt only considers the effect of abiotic factors without biological factors, and its simulation shows only the greatest possibility distribution of species [20,21]. In recent years, MaxEnt has been expanded to include not only ecological degradation processes such as invasive species and Ecological damage [22][23][24][25], but also the prediction of potential risk areas for pests, diseases and epidemics [24,26,27], and the study of potential suitable habitats for rare and endangered species has gradually become a hot spot [28,29]. In the study of rare and endangered species, researchers can identify sites with high ecological stability based on the prediction results, infer the potential geographic distribution, and clarify their potential suitable habitats of different classes.…”