Forest inventory attribute prediction using airborne laser scanning in low-productive forestry-drained boreal peatlands

Nearly 30% of Finland’s land area is covered by peatlands. In Northern parts of the country there is a significant amount of low-productive drained peatlands (LPDPs) where the average annual stem volume growth is less than 1 m ha. The re-use of LPDPs has been considered thoroughly since Finnish forest legislation was updated and the forest regeneration prerequisite was removed from LPDPs in January 2014. Currently, forestry is one of the re-use alternatives, thus detailed forest resource information is required for allocating activities. However, current forest inventory practices have not been evaluated for sparse growing stocks (e.g., LPDPs). The purpose of our study was to evaluate the suitability of airborne laser scanning (ALS) for mapping forest inventory attributes in LPDPs. We used ALS data with a density of 0.8 pulses per m, 558 field-measured reference plots (500 from productive forests and 58 from LPDPs) and nearest neighbour (-NN) estimation. Our main aim was to study the sensitivity of predictions to the number of LPDP reference plots used in the -NN estimation. When the reference data consisted of 500 plots from productive forest stands, the root mean square errors (RMSEs) for the prediction accuracy of Lorey’s height, basal area and stem volume were 1.4 m, 2.7 m ha and 13.7 m ha in LPDPs, respectively. When 30 additional reference plots were allocated to LPDPs, the respective RMSEs were 1.1 m, 1.7 m ha and 10.0 m ha. Additional reference plot allocation did not affect the predictions in productive forest stands.3–12kkk2–13–12–13–1</ja:p

Godina 1918. u svjetskoj i hrvatskoj povijesti

Aims: Although active-controlled trials with renin–angiotensin inhibitors are ethically mandated in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, clinicians and regulators often want to know how the experimental therapy would perform compared with placebo. The angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitor LCZ696 was compared with enalapril in PARADIGM-HF. We made indirect comparisons of the effects of LCZ696 with putative placebos. Methods and results: We used the treatment-arm of the Studies Of Left Ventricular Dysfunction (SOLVD-T) as the reference trial for comparison of an ACE inhibitor to placebo and the Candesartan in Heart failure: Assessment of Reduction in Mortality and morbidity-Alternative trial (CHARM-Alternative) as the reference trial for comparison of an ARB to placebo. The hazard ratio of LCZ696 vs. a putative placebo was estimated through the product of the hazard ratio of LCZ696 vs. enalapril (active-control) and that of the historical active-control (enalapril or candesartan) vs. placebo. For the primary composite outcome of cardiovascular death or heart failure hospitalization in PARADIGM-HF, the relative risk reduction with LCZ696 vs. a putative placebo from SOLVD-T was 43% (95%CI 34–50%; P &#60; 0.0001) with similarly large effects on cardiovascular death (34%, 21–44%; P &#60; 0.0001) and heart failure hospitalization (49%, 39–58%; P &#60; 0.0001). For all-cause mortality, the reduction compared with a putative placebo was 28% (95%CI 15–39%; P &#60; 0.0001). Putative placebo analyses based on CHARM-Alternative gave relative risk reductions of 39% (95%CI 27–48%; P &#60; 0.0001) for the composite outcome of cardiovascular death or heart failure hospitalization, 32% (95%CI 16–45%; P &#60; 0.0001) for cardiovascular death, 46% (33–56%; P &#60; 0.0001) for heart failure hospitalization, and 26% (95%CI 11–39%; P &#60; 0.0001) for all-cause mortality. Conclusion: These indirect comparisons of LCZ696 with a putative placebo show that the strategy of combined angiotensin receptor blockade and neprilysin inhibition led to striking reductions in cardiovascular and all-cause mortality, as well as heart failure hospitalization. These benefits were obtained even though LCZ696 was added to comprehensive background beta-blocker and mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist therapy