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This document outlines the essential components of a natural resource management plan for forest properties. It emphasizes the importance of clear objectives, property location and history, resource assessment, management recommendations, and an activity schedule. The plan serves as a “road map” to guide landowners in achieving their desired outcomes, such as timber production and wildlife habitat improvement. It also highlights the role of consulting foresters and the need for periodic reviews to adapt to changing conditions. The document provides practical advice for creating a flexible and effective management plan. First published August 2001.

Fire is an integral part of the Florida landscape. But what resources exist to support our private landowners who want to incorporate prescribed fires into their management plans? Without a team of skilled professionals on the payroll, safety and fire knowledge are of utmost importance to anyone wanting to ignite prescribed fires on their land. This publication aims to connect Florida landowners with the resources they need for prescribed burning, from planning to ignition to mop up and declaring a fire out. Resources are presented for local, boots-on-the-ground help, as well as training and regional information. Although this is not a comprehensive list, it will guide private landowners who wish to manage their properties with prescribed fire.

ABSTRACT The scarce knowledge about the behavior of seedlings of native forest species relative to sensitivity to herbicides associated with the current strategies for restoring degraded natural ecosystems justifies the execution of studies to assist in this management. This study aimed to evaluate the initial selectivity of two herbicides at three different doses for 80 species that occur in seasonal semideciduous forests and are widely used in restoration projects. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the herbicides oxyfluorfen (Experiment I) and sulfentrazone (Experiment II) at commercial dose, half the dose, and double the dose, as well as control without herbicide application. The experimental design of each experiment was completely randomized, with four replications. The percentage of phytotoxicity following a specific scale in the weed science field was evaluated at 7, 14, 21, 28, and 35 days after treatment application (DAT), while the shoot dry mass was evaluated at 35 DAT. Most native species were classified in the range of 0–10% phytotoxicity for both herbicides. Considering phytotoxicity, the herbicide oxyfluorfen negatively affected the species Inga uruguensis, Erythroxylum argentinum, Pterogyne nitens, Miconia rigidiuscula, and Simira sampaioana. Sulfentrazone showed harmful effects on the species Myrciaria vexator, Piptadenia gonoacantha, Lonchocarpus campestris, Erythroxylum argentinum, Cariniana legalis, Randia armata, Inga vera, Solanum granulosoleprosum, Cupania vernalis, Seguieria langsdorffii, S. sampaioana, Maytenus gonoclada, and Handroanthus ochraceus. Only the species R. armata, Croton floribundus, and I. uruguensis showed a reduction in dry biomass relative to the control. Therefore, the herbicides oxyfluorfen and sulfentrazone can be recommended for weed management for most of the species studied in this study, except those listed above.

ABSTRACT The effective management of disturbed forests requires adequate knowledge of forest dynamics. In this study, we assessed the changes in a managed forest using 18 permanent 1 ha plots located in a ‘terra firme’ tropical rainforest in the Eastern Amazon (Paragominas, Brazil). All individuals with a diameter at breast height (DBH) ≥ 20 cm were evaluated in two separate assessments conducted in 2006 and 2016. The results show that, ten years after logging, the managed forest exhibits an imbalance between recruitment (1.54% per year) and mortality (2.23% per year) rates, indicating that it is still in the process of recovering its structure. Nevertheless, biomass tended to increase after logging (28.49 tons per hectare). The characteristics of these changes suggest that the forest is undergoing a silvigenetic process driven by the effects of logging. Furthermore, our observations indicate that the forest remains active and has sufficient potential for new timber production at the end of the cutting cycle, considering the same species and tree sizes.

Drylands represent the main earth biome, providing ecosytemic services to a large number of people. Along these environments, woodlands are often dominated by multi-stemmed trees, which are exploited by local inhabitants to obtain forest products for their livelihood. In central-west Argentina, Neltuma flexuosa (algarrobo) woodlands are distributed across different landform units, varying in topographical and soil characteristics. This research aimed to reconstruct stem-growth time until harvestable diameter was achieved, and biological rotation age according to topo-edaphic variability in three algarrobo forests using dendrochronological methods. Results indicated that landform heterogeneity modulated species radial growth, influencing stem increments and cutting cycle period. In this sense, a decreasing trend in tree productivity emerged along a loamy-to-sandy textured soil gradient. These findings provide useful novel information for N. flexuosa forest management, suggesting the need to account for spatial landform/soil heterogeneity when examining desert forest dynamics. Highlights: • Neltuma flexuosa provides forest product (poles) to Central Monte Desert (Argentina) local inhabitants. • N. flexuosa wood productivity was assessed for different topo-edaphic landforms. • Cutting cycle was reached at younger ages at river and paleo-river landforms. • Wood extraction must consider landscape heterogeneity.

Fire has been a significant part of southeastern American forests for thousands of years. Prescribed fire is an effective method to achieve some land management goals, but sometimes it is not possible to use this tool. Fortunately, there are alternative treatment options that land managers can consider. Although none of these surrogate treatments will produce the same suite of benefits as prescribed fire, they can mimic some of the benefits that prescribed fire creates and are better than applying no treatments. This publication provides an overview for landowners and land managers that want to understand surrogate treatments and the economic and ecological tradeoffs associated with each treatment.

ABSTRACT Accurate wood volume predictions are critical in hyperdiverse forests because each species has specific size and shape traits. Although generic models at a multispecies level were widely used in Amazonian managed forests, they are subject to more significant bias due to interspecific variability. We used an extensive database of wood volume collected in managed forests to test the hypothesis that generic models violate the independence assumption due to that predictions vary with species-specific size. Our hypothesis was proved as residuals of the generic model were conditioned to species and specific size. The multilevel models were more accurate both in fitting and validation procedures, and accounted for variance derived from species and specific size, providing a more reliable prediction. However, we found that the size-specific models have a similar predictive ability to species-specific models for new predictions. This implies more practical estimates in hyperdiverse forests where fitting species-specific models can be complex. The findings are crucial for sustainable forest management as they allow for more reliable wood volume estimates, leading to less financial uncertainty and preventing damage to forest stocks through under or over-exploitation.

Abstract The objective of this work was to investigate the use of the You Only Look Once (YOLO) convolutional neural network model for the detection and efficient counting of Eucalyptus sp. shoots in stands through aerial photographs captured by unmanned aerial vehicles. For this, the significance of data organization was evaluated during the system-training process. Two datasets were used to train the convolutional neural network: one consisting of images with a single shoot and another with at least ten shoots per image. The results showed high precision and recall rates for both datasets. The convolutional neural network trained with images containing ten shoots per image showed a superior performance when applied to data not used during training. Therefore, the YOLO convolutional neural network can be used for the detection and counting of shoots of Eucalyptus sp. clones from aerial images captured by unmanned aerial vehicles in forest stands. The use of images containing ten shoots is recommended to compose the training dataset for the object detector.

Abstract The objective of this work was to investigate the influence of the qualitative traits canker severity and stem quality on the mean annual increment (MAI) in diameter, total height, and stem height of an African mahogany (Khaya grandifoliola) stand. The study area is located in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, where continuous forest inventories were conducted over six years for data collection. Given the nonparametric characteristic of the data, an aligned rank transform analysis of variance was performed for each factor, and the averages were compared by Dunn’s multiple test. There was no significant effect of the interaction between the classes of canker severity and stand age. Increased canker severity has a significant effect on MAI values, causing reductions of 13% in diameter, 11% in total height, and 21% in stem height in trees from the highest canker severity class, when compared with the healthy ones. Age interacts significantly with stem quality, and MAI values tend to be similar in younger trees, differing over time in the oldest ones. In addition, the highest MAI values are recorded in trees with the best stem classification.

ABSTRACT In Brazil, all transport and storage of native forest products and by-products must be registered within the DOF (Document of Forestry Origin) system. This computerized platform exists to support control agencies in reducing the sale of forest products obtained illegally. However, this tool still shows only modest results in fulfilling its objectives, since gaps in the system allow illegal wood to be acquired and enter the system as legal wood. The objective of this study was to test whether the volumetric yield coefficient (CRV) of a sawmill on an industrial scale corresponds to the 35% established by Brazilian legislation. The focus was directed at a loophole that allows the accumulation of virtual credits in the DOF system by turning logs into lumber. For this purpose, we estimated the sawmill’s CRV and mean percentage yield of 19 commercial species used by a timber company in the Brazilian Amazon with a sample size of 90 logs. The estimated CRV was 24.6 ± 2.4, showing 9.9% uncertainty. The mean CRV differed highly significantly (p < 0.001) from that proposed by the DOF, with a 10.35% difference. Based on these results, the difference between the observed yield and that proposed by the legislation can generate the accumulation of virtual log credits. With this accumulation, managers encounter difficulties in acquiring new logging permits and, consequently, do not meet the actual demand for logs to the sawmill’s capacity.