A Bayesian Belief Network approach to assess the potential of non-wood forest products for small-scale forest owners

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Evaluating Management Strategies Of Integrated Water Resource Management: A Case Study On Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHTs), Bangladesh

Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) for Chittagong Hill Tracts is one the key future issues in Bangladesh forestry decision making of South Asia. Therefore a combined approach of criteria and indicators (C&I) and Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) have been used to formulate a clear and transparent picture of the current situation and to identify a potential and best compromise solution for the sustainable management of mountain watershed of Bangladesh

Decision support approaches in adaptive forest management

Climate and social changes place strong demands on forest managers. Forest managers need powerful approaches and tools, which could help them to be able to react to the rapidly changing conditions. However, the complexity of quantifying forest ecosystems services as well as the complexity of current decision theories, technologies and operation research methods, complicate the creation of one general tool. The continuous research and development in this area is an indispensable part of the success of adaptive management as well as the sharing of knowledge and information between research teams around the world. The Community of Practice of Forest Management Decision Support Systems provides a platform for broad discussion among scientists, researchers as well as forest professionals. This special issue provides papers which resulted from a conference session of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations’ (IUFRO) 125th Anniversary Congress in Freiburg, Germany in 2017. The joint sessions and other meetings (and resulting publications) are appropriate opportunities for knowledge sharing on these important methods and systems for protecting and managing forest ecosystems in the future.This special issue was supported by the project “Advanced research supporting the forestry and wood-processing sector’s adaptation to global change and the 4th industrial revolution”, reg. No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000803

Wnt-mediated Down-regulation of Sp1 Target Genes by a Transcriptional Repressor Sp5

Wnt/beta-catenin signaling regulates many processes during vertebrate development. To study transcriptional targets of canonical Wnt signaling, we used the conditional Cre/loxP system in mouse to ectopically activate beta-catenin during central nervous system development. We show that the activation of Wnt/beta-catenin signaling in the embryonic mouse telencephalon results in the up-regulation of Sp5 gene, which encodes a member of the Sp1 transcription factor family. A proximal promoter of Sp5 gene is highly evolutionarily conserved and contains five TCF/LEF binding sites that mediate direct regulation of Sp5 expression by canonical Wnt signaling. We provide evidence that Sp5 works as a transcriptional repressor and has three independent repressor domains, called R1, R2, and R3, respectively. Furthermore, we show that the repression activity of R1 domain is mediated through direct interaction with a transcriptional corepressor mSin3a. Finally, our data strongly suggest that Sp5 has the same DNA binding specificity as Sp1 and represses Sp1 target genes such as p21. We conclude that Sp5 transcription factor mediates the downstream responses to Wnt/beta-catenin signaling by directly repressing Sp1 target genes