•The concept of the conservation status of a habitat type needs improvement.•A hierarchical order and eighteen indicators were introduced.•Three forest habitat types were subject to testing.•Forest ...habitat types were divided into homogeneous forest habitat subtypes.•Indicators suggested the course of development of the forest habitat types.
The maintenance of biodiversity in forestlands has become one of the major concerns of forestry in the European Union (EU) as well as globally. The EU and its member states implement it through the Forest Europe process, which promotes sustainable forest management, and the EU Council Habitats Directive (HDirective). Within the Forest Europe process, indicators and management concepts are developed for forests in general, whereas the HDirective is concerned with the forest habitats and forest habitat types of the Natura 2000 network. Although the HDirective helps to tackle a broad range of biodiversity problems, there remain some open issues, including the vaguely defined concept of a forest habitat type, conservation status of a forest habitat type, lack of defined indicators of conservation status and undeveloped concepts for the stewardship of forest habitat types. This study addressed most of these open problems. The methods were tested in three habitat types in Slovenia: 9110 – Luzulo-Fagetum beech forests, 91K0 – Illyrian Fagus sylvatica forests (Aremonio-Fagion) and 91L0 – Illyrian oak–hornbeam forests (Erythronio-Carpinion). To make the definition of a forest habitat type more concrete, a hierarchical order was introduced into the current concept of forest habitat types. A hierarchal relation between forest habitat types and their subtypes was established by employing a bottom-up strategy and classification key. This key was developed through exploring the vegetation and eco-geographical characteristics of the forest habitat subtypes. An assessment of the conservation status of forest habitat types was performed using 18 indicators. Only the indicators supporting the favorable conservation status definition outlined in the HDirective were selected. The stewardship of forest habitat types was demonstrated through assessment points depicting the present, ideal and desired states of the indicators. The points were constructed through a basic statistical analysis, vegetation and forest planning models and literature review. The results showed that dividing the three forest habitat types produced less heterogeneous forest habitat subtypes. The indicators and the assessment points performed well as they suggested the preferred course of development of the three forest habitat types. Because of their applicability in different environments, the methods can be used in other European countries and regions and beyond.
Changing environmental conditions, disturbances, and escalating demands for forest ecosystem services require foresters to restore present forestlands with new forest generations that will exhibit ...ecological integrity, diversity, high adaptive capacity, and the ability to provide essential ecosystem services. Establishing such forests requires careful consideration of the forest landscape and site dynamics. In pursuit of these requirements, we developed a novel framework that enables the restoration of forest sites and promotes the desired features of the forest complex at the same time. This framework was designed with the methods of system engineering and was organized in the same way as the forest planning process. It was tested in the habitat type of Illyrian Fagus sylvatica forests belonging to the Natura 2000 network. The environmental, vegetation, and site conditions were investigated via field inspections, available forest management plans, and simple GIS analyses. Additionally, we established a seminatural stand composed of European beech, sessile oak, sycamore maple, silver fir, and some wild fruit tree species. The survival of planted species was assessed using census and simple random sampling, the performance of provenances by Student’s test, while microhabitat factors were explored by a one-way ANOVA. The survival rate of key species was estimated to be 55.6%, while that of fruit species was estimated to be 94.5%. Our framework demonstrated satisfactory performance and contained sufficient benchmarks to facilitate consistent decision-making. In the discussion, we elucidate the framework’s primary features and attributes of the mixed stand, where we also expose some open issues to be addressed in the future.
For groups of ecological and social functions of forests, we critically assessed how individual functions at the first level of emphasis determine the management approach. For all these functions, we ...reviewed the Slovenian scientific literature in the fields of forestry, growth and yield science, nature conservation and legislative sources influencing forest function, and then we prepared our proposal on how to evaluate functions in the future. We propose an updated system of assessing and mapping of emphasized forest functions and an emphasis on close-to-nature management in these forests.
•Approach for identification of entities that are operating within the same context.•Contextualisation of energy consumption is essential for performance monitoring.•Approach with the potential for ...sound decision support of the energy manager.•Combination of two different methods provided additional and valuable information.
The European Union has identified buildings as the most promising targets for improving energy efficiency and has quantified a significant energy saving potential associated with the refurbishment of a building’s envelope and the installation of new technologies. The key objective of monitoring and modelling energy profiles in buildings is to provide the necessary background on energy consumption and to allow informed decisions to be made. The modelling usually starts with the integration of energy into the activity flow charts, which is the basis for the decisions on setting up the structure of energy cost centres.
This paper evaluates the capabilities of data envelopment analysis in combination with energy cost centre based modelling for the electricity consumption analysis of a selected group of elementary schools and kindergartens. The electricity consumption data was obtained in cooperation with a local energy agency, which was acting as the energy manager for the selected group of buildings. The results confirmed the potential of combining the data envelopment analysis and the energy cost centre based modelling in order to properly identify the schools having the potential for energy efficiency improvements. Additionally, the combination of results obtained with the data envelopment analysis and the contextual parameters hidden in the structure of energy cost centres provides additional and valuable information for the energy manager and helps him with proper benchmarking of the analysed energy management practices. The results encouraged the energy manager to look for concrete opportunities to improve the energy efficiency and revealed that electricity savings of up to 14% could be achieved with better energy management in the selected group of buildings.
To meet the demands of sustainable forest management and international commitments, European nations have designed a variety of forest-monitoring systems for specific needs. While the majority of ...countries are committed to independent, single-purpose inventorying, a minority of countries have merged their single-purpose forest inventory systems into integrated forest resource inventories. The statistical efficiencies of the Bavarian, Slovene and Swedish integrated forest resource inventory designs are investigated with the various statistical parameters of the variables of growing stock volume, shares of damaged trees, and deadwood volume. The parameters are derived by using the estimators for the given inventory designs. The required sample sizes are derived via the general formula for non-stratified independent samples and via statistical power analyses. The cost effectiveness of the designs is compared via two simple cost effectiveness ratios.
In terms of precision, the most illustrative parameters of the variables are relative standard errors; their values range between 1% and 3% if the variables' variations are low (s%<80%) and are higher in the case of higher variations. A comparison of the actual and required sample sizes shows that the actual sample sizes were deliberately set high to provide precise estimates for the majority of variables and strata. In turn, the successive inventories are statistically efficient, because they allow detecting the mean changes of variables with powers higher than 90%; the highest precision is attained for the changes of growing stock volume and the lowest for the changes of the shares of damaged trees. Two indicators of cost effectiveness also show that the time input spent for measuring one variable decreases with the complexity of inventories.
There is an increasing need for credible information on forest resources to be used for decision making and national and international policy making. Such information can be cost-efficiently provided through integrated forest resource inventories.
The current governing economic policies and models are favoring maximizing overall solar panel power production in an effort to mitigate climate change. Those were adequate for relative low share of ...solar power within entire energy mix. As the share of photovoltaic energy production rises, those principles directly cause high mid-day summer productions peaks and even negative prices for the electricity, when solar power is in abundance. This prompts for different approach for calculating solar technical and economic potential, which can offer valuable data for planning future energy sources. This paper uses a simplified model to evaluate prevailing self-sustainable rooftop solar electricity production for typical households and micro-grids in combination with battery storage (Solar Plus). The used model is nevertheless covering most important features of solar power production: the weather pattern, load curves and roof orientation and can be used either for single home-owners or small businesses. Typical applications and main benefits of the assessment are discussed and critically reviewed. The used model is suitable for use on single households or house clusters in scattered populated area and was developed based on extensive empirical knowledge.
•Simplified model for photovoltaic roof installations.•Focus is on typical single households or micro-grids with 5–30 houses.•The model accounts for the roof geometry, weather and typical energy demand.•An optimal mixture of PV panels and battery is estimated for different facilities.
Several recent EU documents deal with forests and forestry. Some of them also foreseen the launch of strategic plans for forests at the national level. The paper presents procedural requirements for ...strategic plans and the contents that supposed to be addressed in the plans. In a brief analysis of the drafts of forest management plans for forest regions, we found that the drafts were prepared in accordance with existing national regulation, which is likely to be fulfilled in the future. The main contents of the headings were also consistent with the contents of many EU documents. We found some shortcomings in terms of links among the main themes, existing forest conditions, forest management objectives and pathways.
The goal of this study is to assess residents' preferences for a set of attributes describing the recreation setting in an urban forest (outstanding trees, forest openings, waymarks and information ...boards, and paved walking trails) and to explore the heterogeneity of those preferences. It was captured by a four-class latent class model used to segment a sample of residents of Ljubljana (the capital of Slovenia), who responded to a choice experiment-based poll. The survey focused on the Rožnik urban forest, for which preferences (also willingness-to-pay) for hypothetical changes in the attributes were assessed. Respondents in class 1 were invariant to changes in the recreation setting. Those in class 2 and 4 stated positive preferences for having more outstanding trees. Class 3 and 4 were in favour of increasing the area of forest openings and enhancing the maintenance of waymarks and information boards. Those in class 4 expressed positive preferences for more walking trails, whereas class 3 valued this negatively. Class membership was affected by respondent age, number of adults in the household, frequency of forest visits, income, and purpose of the visit.
•A four-class latent class model describes population preferences for forest recreation setting.•Class membership is affected by socio-demographic characteristics and recreation habits.•Frequent forest visitors are more in favour of changes of the recreation setting.•Preferences recognition enables a better-tailored management of forest recreation setting.
The book (' The Energy Needs Of Humanity Through Time: From The Industrial Revolution To Type I Civilization') is about global consumption of energy and its impact on our planet. Energy demand is a ...quite dynamic phenomenon and depends heavily on technological development, which is particularly evident during industrial revolutions, which had improved the quality of life for the inhabitants, but lead to increase in energy consumption. However~the economic progress did not account for tangible physical limits of our planet, which manifested in rise in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and a rapid increase in average annual global temperature. The consequences of this type of behavior are clear – future global warming, rising sea levels and direct threat to vast, low-lying areas, as well as a rapid increase in the number and consequences of extreme weather events such as storms, prolonged rainfall, and the like. A path toward less energy intense future requires rapid reductions of fossil fuels usage but also a radical shift towards larger energy efficiency. The book is intended as a source of key data showing how we have arrived at the current state of energy consumption and understanding of climate change.
Today engineers involved in the stamping process used for high-volume production of rotor and stator laminations are faced with a great challenge to achieve extremely narrow dimensional and ...geometrical tolerance on their products. Because materials are produced by different suppliers, adjustments of technological parameters to the emerging differences are required to maintain the high quality of products. An upgraded engineering method was developed in which electrical steel sheet of semi-finish grade was not treated traditionally, but as a 3D body with orthotropic material behaviour. The round profile of the cutting edge was studied from the experimental and numerical point of view. If the completely round punch was used, the profile of the cutting edge appeared as a non-round shape. With additional FEM analyses a new profile of punch was designed as a non-round shape to be able to provide much better circularity. FEM simulation showed that 10 times lower profile deviations were found on the workpiece shaped by the new cutting element profile.
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