The Global Forest Transition as a Human Affair

Forests across the world stand at a crossroads where climate and land-use changes are shaping their future. Despite demonstrations of political will and global efforts, forest loss, fragmentation, and degradation continue unabated. No clear evidence exists to suggest that these initiatives are working. A key reason for this apparent ineffectiveness could lie in the failure to recognize the agency of all stakeholders involved. Landscapes do not happen. We shape them. Forest transitions are social and behavioral before they are ecological. Decision makers need to integrate better representations of people’s agency in their mental models. A possible pathway to overcome this barrier involves eliciting mental models behind policy decisions to allow better representation of human agency, changing perspectives to better understand divergent points of view, and refining strategies through explicit theories of change. Games can help decision makers in all of these tasks

Looking beyond forest cover: an analysis of landscape-scale predictors of forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon.

While forest degradation rates and extent exceed deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, less attention is given to the factors controlling its spatial distribution. No quantified correlation exists between changes of forest structure due to anthropogenic disturbances and dynamics of land use and cover change occurring at broader spatial levels. This study examines the influence of multi-scale landscape structure factors (i.e. spatial composition, configuration and dynamic of land use/cover) on primary forest's aboveground biomass (AGB), spanning from low to highly degraded, in Paragominas municipality (Pará state). We used random forest models to identify the most important landscape predictors of degradation and clustering methods to analyze their distribution and interactions. We found that 58% of the variance of AGB could be explained by metrics reflecting land use practices and agricultural dynamics around primary forest patches and that their spatial patterns were not randomly distributed. Forest degradation is mainly driven by fragmentation effects resulting from old deforestation and colonization events linked with cropland expansion (e.g. soybean and maize) coupled with high accessibility to market. To a lesser extent, degradation is driven by recent and ongoing (1985?2015) deforestation and fragmentation in slash-and-burn agricultural areas, characterized by heterogeneous mosaics of pastures and fallow lands combined with high use of fire. Our findings highlight the potential of landscape-level framework and remotely sensed land cover data for a thorough understanding of the distribution of forest degradation across human-modified landscapes. Addressing these spatial determinants by looking at agricultural dynamics beyond forest cover is necessary to improve forest management which has major implications for biodiversity, carbon and other ecosystem services

Les concessions d'exploitation forestière menacent-elles les tourbières en République démocratique du Congo ?

peer reviewed[No abstract available

The Global Forest Transition as a Human Affair

Peer reviewe

70 GHZ FMAX fully-depleted SOI MOSFET’S for low-power wireless applications

For the first time, excellent microwave performances including high frequency noise are ported for 0.25 micron gate channel length Fully Depleted (FD) Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) MOSFET’s: a maximum extrapolated oscillation frequency (fmax) of 70 GHz and the state-of-the-art minimum noise figure (NFmin) of 0.8 dB with high available associated gain (Gass) of 13 dB at 6 GHz, at Vds = 0.75 V, Pdc < 3 mW, have been measured. We demonstrate that the kink related low frequency noise overshoot induced by the floating body effects disappears if the active silicon film thickness is thinned down to 30 nm. Ring oscillators measurements show also that SOI inverters are 30% faster than bulk ones. Finally, the operation at 1.8 V of a sigma delta modulator as well as of critical RF circuits (quadrature generator and mixers) for a zero IF 2 GHz GSM receiver has been demonstrated with this technology

Traitement de 46 malades porteurs de stades IV ORL par radiochimiothérapie concomitante selon un protocole permettant une radiosensibilisation de toutes les séances

Une radiothérapie bifractionnée donnant 48 Gy en 16 séances et 45 jours, initialement palliative, s'est révélée bien adaptée pour l'emploi simultané d'une chimiothérapie radiosensibilisante. Associée à une chimiothérapie à base de cisplatine, fluoro-uracile, etoposide et hydrea, elle a été appliquée à 46 malades porteurs de cancers ORL de stade IV inopérables comprenant 91 % de T4, 9 % de T3, 48 % de N2N3, 72 % de performans status égaux ou inférieurs à 2. Avec un délai médian d'observation de 30 mois on observe 93 % de réponses cliniques complètes à 4 mois avec 38 % de récidives locorégionales ultérieures. La survie est de 58 % à 1 an, 40 % à 2 ans et de 35 % à 3 ans. Ces résultats sont égaux ou supérieurs à ceux qui ont été obtenus avec des radiothérapies hyperfractionnées, accélérées, hyperfractionnées et accélérées, et classiques

UAV-based canopy textures assess changes in forest structure from long-term degradation

Degraded tropical forests dominate agricultural frontiers and their management is becoming an urgent priority. This calls for a better understanding of the different forest cover states and cost-efficient techniques to quantify the impact of degradation on forest structure. Canopy texture analyses based on Very High Spatial Resolution (VHSR) optical imagery provide proxies to assess forest structures but the mechanisms linking them with degradation have rarely been investigated. To address this gap, we used a lightweight Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to map 739 ha of degraded forests and acquire both canopy VHSR images and height model. Thirty-three years of degradation history from Landsat archives allowed us to sample 40 plots in undisturbed, logged, over-logged and burned and regrowth forests in tropical forested landscapes (Paragominas, Para, Brazil). Fourier (FOTO) and lacunarity textures were used to assess forest canopy structure and to build a typology linking degradation history and current states. Texture metrics capture canopy grain, heterogeneity and openness gradients and correlate with forest structure variability (R2 = 0.58). Similar structures share common degradation history and can be discriminated on the basis of canopy texture alone (accuracy = 55%). Over-logging causes a lowering in forest height, which brings homogeneous textures and of finer grain. We identified the major changes in structures due to fire following logging which changes heterogeneous and intermediate grain into coarse textures. Our findings highlight the potential of canopy texture metrics to characterize degraded forests and thus be used as indicators for forest management and degradation mitigation. Inexpensive and agile UAV open promising perspectives at the interface between field inventory and satellite characterization of forest structure using texture metrics