Determinants of maximum tree height in<i>Eucalyptus</i>species along a rainfall gradient in Victoria, Australia

Givnish, Thomas J.; Wong, Sherman; Stuart‐Williams, Hilary; Holloway‐Phillips, Meisha; Farquhar, Graham D.

doi:10.1890/14-0240.1

Cited by 106 publications

(108 citation statements)

References 119 publications

(158 reference statements)

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“…Our static model is built around four major structural constraints of spatial architecture and dynamics of forests. First, the allometric relationships (rule 3) incorporate the essence of tree geometry found at each site that reflects local environmental conditions (16,17) and physical constraints on canopies (21,22). Second, rule 2 considers average tree growth and mortality of trees in the most basic way and therefore incorporates the essence of tree dynamics like recruitment, growth, and mortality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The structure of tropical forests and sphere packings

Taubert

Jahn

Dobner

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The search for simple principles underlying the complex architecture of ecological communities such as forests still challenges ecological theorists. We use tree diameter distributions-fundamental for deriving other forest attributes-to describe the structure of tropical forests. Here we argue that tree diameter distributions of natural tropical forests can be explained by stochastic packing of tree crowns representing a forest crown packing system: a method usually used in physics or chemistry. We demonstrate that tree diameter distributions emerge accurately from a surprisingly simple set of principles that include site-specific tree allometries, random placement of trees, competition for space, and mortality. The simple static model also successfully predicted the canopy structure, revealing that most trees in our two studied forests grow up to 30-50 m in height and that the highest packing density of about 60% is reached between the 25-and 40-m height layer. Our approach is an important step toward identifying a minimal set of processes responsible for generating the spatial structure of tropical forests.tropical forest | forest size structure | stochastic geometry | tree crown packing | leaf area F orests are one of the world's best investigated ecosystems (1-4). However, despite all of the studies devoted to forests, mechanistic connections among important features of forest physiognomy are not fully understood. Of crucial importance for this are tree diameter distributions, which have been used for decades in ecology and forestry to characterize the state of forests. Tree diameter distributions are available for many forests of the world and allow together with tree allometries prediction of other important forest attributes like leaf area (5), basal area (6), above-ground biomass (7), tree density, and the presence or absence of disturbances (8). Tropical forests usually include many small trees and far fewer large ones (1, 9). Diameter distributions can also be predicted from dynamic forest models (10-13) in which the forest structure emerges from the interplay between the dynamic processes of mortality, regeneration, competition, and growth.In this study, we argue that tree diameter distributions of natural tropical forests can be predicted by stochastic packing theory-a method usually used in physics or chemistry-together with sitespecific tree allometries. Packing systems have a long history of use across a wide range of disciplines, going back as far as Kepler's analysis of regular packing of spheres (i.e., with a maximum of 74% filled volume). Irregular stochastic packing of spheres has been analyzed in the last decades and shows lower maximal packing densities (e.g., jammed sphere packing systems in physics, with 55-64% filled volume) (14, 15). We show here that simple principles of stochastic packing theory together with tree allometries and other simple structural rules allow for an accurate prediction of observed tree diameter distributions and related structural attributes for two tropical for...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The structure of tropical forests and sphere packings

Taubert

Jahn

Dobner

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…TRMM data cover the average daily precipitation over the last 10 years (2003-2013) with a resolution of 8 km (Rain, Figure S3c). Recent studies suggest a tight relationship between maximum canopy height in old stands and the ration of annual rainfall [32]. As the ratio of rainfall increases, so did maximum tree height.…”

Section: Average Rainfall Mapmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Scale Rain-Forest Height Mapping Using Regression-Kriging of Spaceborne and Airborne LiDAR Data: Application on French Guiana

Fayad¹,

Baghdadi²,

Bailly

et al. 2016

Remote Sensing

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LiDAR data has been successfully used to estimate forest parameters such as canopy heights and biomass. Major limitation of LiDAR systems (airborne and spaceborne) arises from their limited spatial coverage. In this study, we present a technique for canopy height mapping using airborne and spaceborne LiDAR data (from the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS)). First, canopy heights extracted from both airborne and spaceborne LiDAR were extrapolated from available environmental data. The estimated canopy height maps using Random Forest (RF) regression from airborne or GLAS calibration datasets showed similar precisions (~6 m). To improve the precision of canopy height estimates, regression-kriging was used. Results indicated an improvement in terms of root mean square error (RMSE, from 6.5 to 4.2 m) using the GLAS dataset, and from 5.8 to 1.8 m using the airborne LiDAR dataset. Finally, in order to investigate the impact of the spatial sampling of future LiDAR missions on canopy height estimates precision, six subsets were derived from the initial airborne LiDAR dataset. Results indicated that using the regression-kriging approach a precision of 1.8 m on the canopy height map was achievable with a flight line spacing of 5 km. This precision decreased to 4.8 m for flight line spacing of 50 km.

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“…The species commercialized by FCP are usually the same species harvested in other enterprises in central Quintana Roo [28,55], a state with more than 500,000 ha of managed forests [62] and including the most commonly-commercialized species in Mexican tropical forests [33]. Examining the applicability of equations across sites would be ideal, because, although the vegetation is similar in composition and structure to that in FCP [63,64], differences in soil fertility could affect the maximum tree height [65] and, thus, PBVs. Likewise, the method implemented here could be used to calculate PBVs of the 25 species listed by the ejido with potential for sawn lumber [25].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Updating Bark Proportions for the Estimation of Tropical Timber Volumes by Indigenous Community-Based Forest Enterprises in Quintana Roo, Mexico

Rosell

Wehenkel

Pérez-Martínez

et al. 2017

Forests

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Sustainable management of tropical forests is essential for conserving the ecosystem services they provide and protecting the livelihoods of the millions of people who depend on these forests. Community-based forest management in Quintana Roo, Mexico, has shown that conserving forests while generating economic benefits is achievable in the tropics. However, this management is carried out with technical gaps that jeopardize sustainable use of these resources. Crucial among these gaps is a lack of equations for precise calculations of logged timber volumes. Current equations employ a proportion of bark volume (PBV) of 0.14 for mahogany and a flat 0.10 for species with dense woods, despite their wide variation in bark thickness. Here, using Meyer's method, we calculated species-specific PBVs for the most commercially-important species in the Felipe Carrillo Puerto community-based logging operation. For most species, the new PBVs were smaller, indicating that wood volumes are currently underestimated. However, for two species, PBVs were higher. New values could influence the profits of the local enterprise and on the management of some of the most commercially-important species of Mexico's tropical forests through changes in the numbers of individuals felled.

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Determinants of maximum tree height inEucalyptusspecies along a rainfall gradient in Victoria, Australia

Cited by 106 publications

References 119 publications

The structure of tropical forests and sphere packings

The structure of tropical forests and sphere packings

Regional Scale Rain-Forest Height Mapping Using Regression-Kriging of Spaceborne and Airborne LiDAR Data: Application on French Guiana

Updating Bark Proportions for the Estimation of Tropical Timber Volumes by Indigenous Community-Based Forest Enterprises in Quintana Roo, Mexico

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