We tested six hypotheses to explain expected geographical differences in body masses of brown bears from northern and southern Europe. Although brown bear populations in North America vary greatly in body mass, we found no significant difference in body mass between the two European populations using a new analytical approach incorporating modelled age-standardized body masses in linear models. Northern bears gained more body mass before hibernation and lost more during hibernation than southern bears, probably because hibernation was twice as long in the north.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1847462
The paper is a result of international research co-operation inside NAT-MAN project. Dead wood is regarded as an important aspect of forest biodiversity forming key habitats for many species. Fallen dead wood and stumps provide nurse logs for regeneration in cool temperate, boreal and sub-montane forest types. Dead wood influences the forest microclimate and can act as an important water-storing element during dry periods. It is also an important long-term nutrient storage, the carbon content adds significantly to the overall carbon storage of forest ecosystems.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1466022
The Dinaric Mountains in Slovenia have some of the last remaining remnants of old-growth forest in SE Europe. They provide valuable opportunities to understand the processes that drive natural forests. One of the major sets of processes that influence these ecosystems are natural disturbances. In order to understand how they affect the forest, it is necessary to quantify the different characteristics of the disturbance regime. This is one of the first studies, which clearly demonstrates importance of intermediate disturbance for old-growth regeneration cycles in Dinaric Mountains.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1657766
The paper was presented in the World IALE Congress 2003, Australia and selected for publication in the journal Landscape Ecology. Due to positive reactions on the article the authors have decided to establish – together with some colleagues an international scientific and educational group PERISCAPE which would try to in a new way evaluate peripheric European landscapes. One of the results of the action was that, we imagined a specific educational process integrated in an inter-disciplinary “landscape ambassador” seminar that has been agreed for 3 years as an Intensive Erasmus program in 2006.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1677222
Objective of the article is to determine the optimal sequence of forest management decisions. Research is based on the international and Slovene strategies of nature protection, close to nature and multiple use forest management. Thus, the problem of attaining the optimal forest management decisions was treated as a multicriteria decision problem respecting the economic, ecological, social and technological demands. Novelty of the presented research lies in the view of theory in a logical linkage of deterministic and stochastic methods.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1673638