Abstract• Increased mortality of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) and spreading of deciduous trees are observed in the Swiss Rhone valley. Previous research identified climate change effects as main drivers of this trend. On the local scale, we hypothesize that legacies from past anthropogenic disturbances are superimposed on climate effects.• We reconstructed land-use history and quantified changes in tree species composition from 1930 to 1994 on 9468 ha of forested land. The aim was to analyze the contribution of anthropogenic disturbances to the observed changes and to disentangle human impact from climate change effects.• At altitudes below 1 200 m a.s.l. we found a shift from pine (-11.4%) to deciduous trees (+11%) with significantly lower increase of deciduous trees in stands formerly used for grazing and/or litter collecting. Conversely, pine decrease was not correlated with former anthropogenic disturbances. We interpret pine mortality as an effect of increased drought stress due to climate change while spread of deciduous trees is driven by land-use change. Grazing and litter collecting hindered deciduous tree regeneration and it was not until their abandonment a few decades ago that forest composition started to change. At higher elevations the shift from Norway spruce (Picea abies; -8.5%) to European larch (Larix decidua; +8.2%) corresponds to silvicultural management schemes, aimed at promoting larch recruitment.• Our study illustrates the importance of disentangling climate from land-use change effects for understanding shifts in forest composition. The findings are relevant for other regions in the European Alps where forests undergo comparable environmental changes.

Soils are vital for supporting food security and other ecosystem services. Climate change can affect soil functions both directly and indirectly. Direct effects include temperature, precipitation, and moisture regime changes. Indirect effects include those that are induced by adaptations such as irrigation, crop rotation changes, and tillage practices. Although extensive knowledge is available on the direct effects, an understanding of the indirect effects of agricultural adaptation options is less complete. A review of 20 agricultural adaptation case‐studies across Europe was conducted to assess implications to soil threats and soil functions and the link to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The major findings are as follows: (a) adaptation options reflect local conditions; (b) reduced soil erosion threats and increased soil organic carbon are expected, although compaction may increase in some areas; (c) most adaptation options are anticipated to improve the soil functions of food and biomass production, soil organic carbon storage, and storing, filtering, transforming, and recycling capacities, whereas possible implications for soil biodiversity are largely unknown; and (d) the linkage between soil functions and the SDGs implies improvements to SDG 2 (achieving food security and promoting sustainable agriculture) and SDG 13 (taking action on climate change), whereas the relationship to SDG 15 (using terrestrial ecosystems sustainably) is largely unknown. The conclusion is drawn that agricultural adaptation options, even when focused on increasing yields, have the potential to outweigh the negative direct effects of climate change on soil degradation in many European regions.

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Abstmcl-This paper proposes R novel approach t o object detection and tracking using video sensors. Two different metbed* are employed to retrieve depth information from images: *termpsis and depth from motion. The obtained data streams are fused yielding increased reliability and a=curacy. A set of image points is tracked over time using an Extended Kalman Fllter. The proposed algorithm CIU5ters points of similnr dynamics by onnlysis of the Rlter residuals.Experimental results aro provided for synthetic as well BS for natural image sequences. Ice imagc right image disparity optical flow estimation estimation K e w m d -Depth from motion, depth from Stereo, Kalman filter. sensor data fusion, tracking.

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Summary The assessment of biomass and biomass changes due to environmental influences requires not only stem or merchantable mass, but also branches and needles. They have been of relatively lit-tle importance to forest managers to date, but their inclusion in models can make the resulting predictions more precise. A hybrid method is described to derive regressions for site quality, needle and branch biomass for individual Picea abies trees. By using Swiss stand table data on tree density distributions, a traditional yield table for branch and needle biomass is computed, and from these, regressions are derived which use only age and site quality as independent vari-ables. Three tables for typical site qualities are given. The tabulated regressions include pseudo-probability values, coefficients of determination and estimated standard error for the overall models. These biomass fractions comprise a varying fraction of the tree, being important at low ages and much less so at later ages.