Delivering forestry courses online:experiences,lessons learned,and future of forestry online education in the Asia Pacifi c

Innovation in forestry education is needed to address changing contexts of the positionality of forests.This is particularly signifi cant in the Asia–Pacifi c region,where deforestation and degradation are high.However,the accessibility of high-quality forestry education to address changing regional and global contexts is lacking.A series of innovative sustainable forest management(SFM)open education resource(OER)courses were developed and implemented to improve the accessibility of SFM education to enhance teaching quality,curriculum,and research capacity of universities in the Asia-Pacifi c Region.To evaluate the SFM-OER program in terms of student experiences,this study investigated student achievement,perceived success of the pedagogical approach and instructional design,and perceived eff ectiveness of the learning activities in promoting active and transformative learning through the assessment of a 1,191-course feedback survey between 2018 and 2020,including the global pandemic.This study revealed that the program attracted diverse student demographics,including a higher proportion of female students majoring in forestry,ecology,and other environmental studies.Their primary motivation to participate in the courses was to gain international experience,followed by the fl exibility of online learning,mandatory course requirements,and earning course credits.Students were satisfi ed with the Canvas learning management system.Most students spent less than 5 to 10 h of their weekly time in the course and agreed or strongly agreed that the workloads were manageable.Students refl ected positively on various learning activities and assignments,such as watching lecture videos,taking quizzes,reading and summarizing,having discussions,and peer review writing.However,they did not clearly prefer specifi c learning activities,signifying the importance of using diverse learning activities to satisfy diverse individual learning styles in online settings.This analysis contributes to the further development of student-centered pedagogical development for online learning and provides insight into the ways forward for online higher forestry education,while repurposing existing OER courses in a post-Covid-19 era.

Countermeasures for the Protection and Sustainable Development of Forestry Resources

Firstly,the problems of the protection and sustainable development of forestry resources were analyzed,such as lack of overall planning for the protection of forestry resources,insufficient investment in the protection of forestry resources,etc.Afterwards,the corresponding countermeasures were proposed,such as making overall planning for sustainable forestry development,increasing the investment in the protection of forestry resources,improving the forestry management system,etc.

Riverscape Approach and Forestry Interventions for Ganga River Rejuvenation

Rivers have been degraded globally due to various reasons over centuries and limiting their ecological health and value, including Ganga River in India. Riverscape approach can provide relevant information on riverine resources needed in river restoration programmes. We propose a conceptual riverscape model to rejuvenate the holy river Ganga in India through forestry interventions after due consideration of ecological processes, mosaic of landforms, communities and environment within the large landscape of Ganga basin. The select riverscape area includes the area of 5 km and 2 km on either side of the river Ganga and important tributaries, respectively, all along the rivers in five stakeholder states of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal in the country. The width of the riverscape was taken from the maximum bank line in recent years on either side of river in the concerned state. However, all micro-watersheds in the hills of Uttarakhand state, being the origin place of river, have been included in riverscape area up to Haridwar. Here riverscape is a mosaic of different land uses viz., natural ecosystems, rural and agricultural ecosystems and built-up urban environment including flood plain and is an ecologically sustained system developed during the last 30 years due to river meandering all along the river. Geospatial modelling and GIS data on land use pattern, soil erosion rates, slope of the topography, etc. were used to classify riverscape area into high, medium and low priority areas to implement forestry interventions in delineated riverscape. Thereafter, forestry interventions were planned and carried out in three identified landscapes viz., Natural (forests), Agriculture (agroforestry), and Urban along with conservation activities. Forestry interventions in delineated riverscape are expected to increase water recharge and decrease the sedimentation load in the Ganga River and its tributaries.

Forestry Interventions and Groundwater Recharge, Sediment Control and Carbon Sequestration in the Krishna River Basin

It is a known fact that human activities have a significant impact on global rivers, making the task of rehabilitating them to their former natural state or a more semi-natural state quite challenging. The ongoing initiative called “Rejuvenation of Krishna River through Forestry Interventions” aims to contribute to the overall river rejuvenation program in the country. In this context, the effects of forestry interventions on the Krishna River will be evaluated based on water quantity, water quality, and the potential for carbon sequestration through plantation efforts. To assess the outcomes of this study, various methodologies such as Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (SCS-CN), Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been utilized to estimate water savings, reduction in sedimentation, and carbon sequestration potential within the Krishna basin. The projected results indicate that the implementation of forestry plantations and soil and moisture conservation measures in the Krishna River rejuvenation program could lead to significant improvements. Specifically, the interventions are expected to enhance water recharge by 400.49 million cubic meters per year, reduce sedimentation load by 869.22 cubic meters per year, and increase carbon sequestration by 3.91 lakh metric tonnes per year or 14.34 lakh metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent. By incorporating forestry interventions into the Krishna riverscape, it is anticipated that the quality and quantity of water flowing through the river will be positively impacted. These interventions will enhance water infiltration, mitigate soil erosion, and contribute to an improved vegetation cover, thereby conserving biodiversity. Moreover, they offer additional intangible benefits such as addressing climate change concerns through enhanced carbon sequestration potential along the entire stretch of riverine areas.

Research on the Construction of Entrepreneurship Course Clusters for Students in Agriculture and Forestry Universities

Curriculum construction is the key factor in determining the quality of education.The innovation and entrepreneurship course clusters have effectively upgraded entrepreneurship courses in terms of talent cultivation,resource integration,and educational practice.In response to the existing problems and difficulties in the construction of entrepreneurship course clusters in agricultural and forestry universities,suggestions and measures are proposed from macro-,meso-,and micro-level perspectives to reach a consensus on entrepreneurship education,construct interdisciplinary course clusters,and improve the quality and effect of education implementation.This provides a reference for agricultural and forestry universities to construct high-quality entrepreneurship course clusters.

Forestry Standardization & Forestry Insurance

Forestry insurance of our country has developed slowly, of which the main difficulty lies in predicting and determining forestry risk , confirming the sum insured, raising the premiums , indemnity for property loss , coordinating forestry insurance and forestry protection, and lack of insurance legal system etc. With the implementation of forestry’s standardized project, and overcoming effectively the technological obstacle existing in forestry’s insurance , the development speed of forestry’s insurance will be accelerated too.

Introduction to Urban and Community Forestry in the United States of America: History, Accomplishments, Issues and Trends

The urban and community forestry movement in the United States has matured over the last 20 years from managing street trees, to understanding the benefits of trees in urban ecosystems, and now to managing urban green infrastructure. This paper introduced the history, development, and major accomplishments of the urban and community forestry movement, highlighted the economic, ecological, environmental, and social values of forests and trees to communities, and discussed issues and trends of the urban and community forestry program in the United States.

Forestry big data platform by Knowledge Graph

Using the advantages of web crawlers in data collection and distributed storage technologies,we accessed to a wealth of forestry-related data.Combined with the mature big data technology at its present stage,Hadoop's distributed system was selected to solve the storage problem of massive forestry big data and the memory-based Spark computing framework to realize real-time and fast processing of data.The forestry data contains a wealth of information,and mining this information is of great significance for guiding the development of forestry.We conducts co-word and cluster analyses on the keywords of forestry data,extracts the rules hidden in the data,analyzes the research hotspots more accurately,grasps the evolution trend of subject topics,and plays an important role in promoting the research and development of subject areas.The co-word analysis and clustering algorithm have important practical significance for the topic structure,research hotspot or development trend in the field of forestry research.Distributed storage framework and parallel computing have greatly improved the performance of data mining algorithms.Therefore,the forestry big data mining system by big data technology has important practical significance for promoting the development of intelligent forestry.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOME FORESTRY TABLES FOR DAHURIAN LARCH PLANTATIONS

Several growth models were selected to fit data of dahurian larch plantations using nonlinear regression analysis. The best models were used to construct the site index table’ the 2-way volume table and the growth process table. The Chapman-Richards equation is the best model used as the guide curve to form the site index table for dahurian larch plantations.

Elementary Experiences,Problems and Countermeasures of County Forestry Economy

County forestry economy is a strong power for regional green economic development,and an important way to improve farmers' income and promote living environment in urban and rural areas. According to the investigation of ten typical counties or cities with forestry industrial advantage,this paper sums up the elementary experiences of county forestry economy,analyzes its prominent problems. Countermeasures are brought forward to improve the development of county forestry economy.

Application of optimal harvesting decision model to the analysis of Chinese forestry economic policy

This paper firstly extends the single period forest optimal harvesting decision model to infinite periods,in order to indicate how to determine the optimal rotation period aimed at maximizing forest revenue in all directions when repeat planting and harvesting trees on the same plot of earth till infinite future.The study also analyzes the influence of discounted rates,timber price,harvesting costs,planting costs,and tax on the determination of optimal rotation period;and how the optimal rotation period will change when we introduce the factors of continuously rising timber price and ecological revenue.Secondly,the authors introduce the intergenerational equity principle into the above model to design a resource-exploiting mode which satisfies bom the dynamic efficiency principle and the intergenerational equity principle.Last but not least,the research applies the above model to the analysis of Chinese forestry economic policy and explains the economic theory of institutions such as Government Purchasing Ecological Forest,Tree Compensation,and Forestry Subsidization,which provides a necessary theoretical foundation for future application of these new institutions.Besides,in regard to mis theoretical framework,the authors analyze the necessity of the Natural Forest Protection and Grain for Green projects which are currently being implemented in China.We also point out the emphasis of work to insure the project sustainable and successful.Finally,the research discusses the enterprise's incentive to over-the-quota harvesting and the government's means of restricting such behavior,which highlights the fact mat improved supervision and higher penalties are helpful in restricting over-the-quota harvesting.

Risk Assessment and Service Benefit Evaluation of Forestry Meteorological Disasters in Guangxi

In order to strengthen the construction of forestry meteorological service capacity and improve the quality of forestry meteorological services,the national forestry meteorological disaster risk survey and service benefit assessment were carried out from November 2016 to May2017. A total of 196 risk sites in Guangxi were collected by means of questionnaire survey,expert evaluation and field survey. The results showed that fire,pest and wind hazards are the main types of risk points in Guangxi. The survey showed that there were 77 monitoring stations around the disaster risk sites belonging to the Forestry Sector,which mainly monitor fire hazards,while other disasters had no monitoring point yet. Early warning facilities were still constantly improving. The meteorological disasters that affecting forestry production were drought,gale,and heavy rainfall,and the main meteorological hazard factors were temperature,wind speed,and precipitation. Forest fire prevention,forestry resources development and utilization,forestation and tending demand for meteorological services were relatively large. It was hoped that forestry meteorological service products would be obtained through telephone,SMS and early warning systems. In addition,experts objectivly evaluated the contribution rate of meteorological services in Guangxi. The contribution rate of forest meteorological services in the whole region was8. 41%. The scale of Guangxi's total forestry output value was 31. 478 billion yuan in 2016. According to the calculation of this value,the service benefit value had reached 2. 647 billion yuan. In conclusion,strengthening the cooperation in forestry meteorological monitoring,technology development,and emergency response,and further improving forestry meteorological services and effective reducing forestry disaster losses are the top priorities of the meteorological department.

Educational Reform in Management Courses of Agricultural & Forestry Higher Vocational Schools from the Perspective of Microblog

At present there are many socialized microblog platforms.With powerful mobility,real-time information,fragment of information dissemination,and innovation of interaction,the microblog has become a socialized interaction mode in recent years.Since microblog is very popular with students of agricultural and forestry higher vocational schools,with the rising and development of network education,the microblog as a new information platform will be used by more and more teachers in education.From the perspective of microblog,this paper studied educational reform in management courses of agricultural and forestry higher vocational schools,in the hope of providing certain reference and help for current education practice of agricultural and forestry management courses.

Grey Prediction Analysis on Forestry Industrial Structure of China

The grey relevance analysis is applied to study the 1996-2009 output value structure of China forestry system. Based on GM(1,1) model, information model is established to predict the forestry industrial structure of China in the next 10 years. Result shows that grey correlations between the three forestry industries and the forestry output value are 0.849 1, 0.731 1 and 0.821 3, respectively, with its order being secondary industry<tertiary industry<primary industry. Prediction result shows that forestry industry of China is in the middle stage of industrialization; and both secondary and tertiary industries will develop rapidly and become the leading industries.

Structural Analysis of the Factors Influencing the Financing of Forestry Enterprises Based on Interpretive Structural Modeling(ISM)

Through the collection of related literature,we point out the six major factors influencing China's forestry enterprises' financing: insufficient national support; regulations and institutional environmental factors; narrow channels of financing; inappropriate existing mortgagebacked approach; forestry production characteristics; forestry enterprises' defects. Then,we use interpretive structural modeling( ISM) from System Engineering to analyze the structure of the six factors and set up ladder-type structure. We put three factors including forestry production characteristics,shortcomings of forestry enterprises and regulatory,institutional and environmental factors as basic factors and put other three factors as important factors. From the perspective of the government and enterprises,we put forward some personal advices and ideas based on the basic factors and important factors to ease the financing difficulties of forestry enterprises.

Case Study on the Forestry Cooperation Model from Game Structure Perspective

Take Chinese yew cooperative organization for example,different game structures of forestry cooperation model were analyzed,the elative merit and applicable occasion was discussed combined with empirical investigation,and some suggestions were given also.The results showed that depending entirely on normal forest farmers cooperate spontaneously is difficult.Policies should be designed from the perspective of promoted village cadres and influential family salons to cooperation.When market factors become the main obstacle,it is necessary to introduce companies,relax constraints of forest management and build the right market atmosphere.According to unequal status of company and forest farmers,develop the cooperation model of " company + cooperation organization + farmers".In certain circumstances,especially there are several companies vicious competition,the intervention of association can play a coordinating role.

Power, the Hidden Factor in Development Cooperation. An Example of Community Forestry in Cameroon

This paper is concomitant with our comparative study analysis of the interests and power of the stake-holders involved in Community Forestry (CF) in six countries. The study hypothesises that, “governance processes and outcomes in CF depend mostly on interests of the powerful external stakeholders”. For this paper which is on CF in Cameroon, the study hypothesizes that, “Power is a hidden factor in Development cooperation”. Based on political theories, the paper uses the “actor-centered power” (ACP) concept of the Community Forestry Working Group (CFWG) in G?ttingen, Germany, the post-development theory and empirical findings, to back up the assertations made in the study through the analysis of thirteen different CFs in the South West region (SWR) of Cameroon. It analyzes the empirically applicable ACP concept, that consists of three elements: trust, incentives and coercion and at the same time connects these elements with the post-development theory. The elements were derived from the basic assumptions on power made by Max Weber in political sciences and Max Krott in forest policy. The study confirms the existence of powerful internal and external stakeholders that influence CF in Cameroon and aims to empower important but marginalised communities. It concludes that, CF as a development instrument to alleviate poverty and increase livelihood while sustainably managing the forest has actually not brought significant or meaningful development to the targeted sector of the

Family Forest Owners’ Motivation to Control Understory Vegetation: Implications for Consulting Forestry

Forest vegetation management has evolved as a recognized component of intensive forest management practice. It involves the management of competing vegetation necessary to obtain the high yields expected in modern forest plantations via control of interfering plants that influence regeneration outcome, impact timber stand development, and limit native plant and wildlife diversity. It includes cultural control, fire control, mechanical control, biological control, and chemical control. The public perception of forest vegetation management, especially chemical control, is sometimes negative due to health and environmental concerns. It is an important tool in the forest management alternatives available to consulting foresters managing family forest lands (the vast majority of private forest land in the United States). We report on a study that addresses the motivations of family forest owners that implement forest vegetation management practices and the motivation of those who chose not to implement after forester recommendations to do so. For those who do implement forest vegetation management, improvement of wildlife habitat and increased timber growth was the main motivation. For those who did not, cost was the main concern. Size of forest holding plays a major role in determining who will practice intensive forestry.

Empirical analysis of Beijing forestry industrial structure and its competitiveness under the background of low carbon economy

With Shift-Share Method, the study implemented an empirical analysis of Beijing's forestry industrial structure and its regional competitiveness around China from 2002 to 2011.The results indicated that the development tendency of forestry industry structure will be gradually transferred from "primarysecondary –tertiary industry" into "tertiary-secondary-primary industry". As the study suggested that the basic position of the primary forestry industry should be strengthened and promoted, deep processing capacity and resources utilization of the secondary industry should be further developed, and the leading role of the tertiary industry should be further enhanced in accordance with the low carbon concept.

THE PROBLEMS AND MEDITATION OF PRACTICING NEWTAXATION SYSTEM PRACTICED IN FORESTRY

After the new taxation system was practiced, the burden of forestry taxation was increased generally. How to extricate oneself from a predicament, it needs to draft tax reduction by the government. The revenue of both forestry products and multiple management should be exempted from taxation, the timber products logs of forest industry shouldn’t be imposed added-value tax, 8 percent tax on special products of agriculture and forestry levied by enterprise acting for tax bureau should be is delayed to pratice, the fund of for silviculture shouldn’t be imposed duties as taxable service.