Modelling Tree Growth in Monospecific Forests from Forest Inventory Data

Abstract

The prediction of tree growth is key to further understand the carbon sink role of forests and the short-term forest capacity on climate change mitigation. In this work, we used large-scale data available from three consecutive forest inventories in a Euro-Mediterranean region and the Bertalanffy–Chapman–Richards equation to model up to a decade’s tree size variation in monospecific forests in the growing stages. We showed that a tree-level fitting with ordinary differential equations can be used to forecast tree diameter growth across time and space as function of environmental characteristics and initial size. This modelling approximation was applied at different aggregation levels to monospecific regions with forest inventories to predict trends in aboveground tree biomass stocks. Furthermore, we showed that this model accurately forecasts tree growth temporal dynamics as a function of size and environmental conditions. Further research to provide longer term prediction forest stock dynamics in a wide variety of forests should model regeneration and mortality processes and biotic interactions.

Thermodynamic substantiation of ecological-physiological modeling

“…Many different types of forest ecosystem models are used in forestry practice [see, for example, 3,4]. These papers provide a typology of models and a history of mathematical modeling of tree community dynamics.…”

Modeling Forest Stand Dynamics, Growth and Yield

“…This Special Issue is comprised of eight papers with authors from 11 countries in Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America, and South America. The compilation begins with a paper on modeling tree growth using forest inventory data [1], which is followed by a presentation on modeling spatial structure changes in white spruce plantations after thinning [2]. A non-destructive method for tree pith location based on terrestrial laser scanning is described in the next paper [3].…”