Comprehensive book describes the various growth patterns of forests. The purpose is to help silviculturalists and forest managers understand and anticipate how forests grow and respond to intentional manipulations and natural disasters.

Comprehensive book describes the various growth patterns of forests. The purpose is to help silviculturalists and forest managers understand and anticipate how forests grow and respond to intentional manipulations and natural disasters.

The aim of this book is to improve the understanding of forest dynamics and the sustainable management of forest ecosystems. How do tree crowns, trees or entire forest stands respond to thinning in the long term? What effect do tree species mixtures and multi-layering have on the productivity and stability of trees, stands or forest enterprises? How do tree and stand growth respond to stress factors such as climate change or air pollution? Furthermore, in the event that one has acquired knowledge about the effects of thinning, mixture and stress, how can one make that knowledge applicable to decision-making in forestry practice? The experimental designs, analytical methods, general relationships and models for answering questions of this kind are the focus of this book. Given the structures dealt with, which range from plant organs to the tree, stand and enterprise levels, and the processes analysed in a time frame of days or months to decades or even centuries, this book is directed at all readers interested in trees, forest stands and forest ecosystems. This work has been compiled for students, scientists, lecturers, forest planners, forest managers, and consultants.

Drawing upon a wealth of past research and results, this book provides a comprehensive summary of state-of-the-art methods for empirical modeling of forest trees and stands. It opens by describing methods for quantifying individual trees, progresses to a thorough coverage of whole-stand, size-class and individual-tree approaches for modeling forest stand dynamics, growth and yield, moves on to methods for incorporating response to silvicultural treatments and wood quality characteristics in forest growth and yield models, and concludes with a discussion on evaluating and implementing growth and yield models. Ideal for use in graduate-level forestry courses, this book also provides ready access to a plethora of reference material for researchers working in growth and yield modeling.

The book is designed to be a textbook for university students (MSc-PhD level) and a reference for researchers and practitioners. It is an introduction to dynamic modelling of forest growth based on ecological theory but aiming for practical applications for forest management under environmental change. It is largely based on the work and research findings of the authors, but it also covers a wide range of literature relevant to process-based forest modelling in general. The models presented in the book also serve as tools for research and can be elaborated further as new research findings emerge. The material in the book is arranged such that the student starts from basic concepts and formulations, then moves towards more advanced theories and methods, finally learning about parameter estimation, model testing, and practical application. Exercises with solutions and hands-on R-code are provided to help the student digest the concepts and become proficient with the methods. The book should be useful for both forest ecologists who want to become modellers, and for applied mathematicians who want to learn about forest ecology. The basic concepts and theory are formulated in the first four chapters, including a review of traditional descriptive forest models, basic concepts of carbon balance modelling applied to trees, and theories and models of tree and forest structure. Chapter 5 provides a synthesis in the form of a core model which is further elaborated and applied in the subsequent chapters. The more advanced theories and methods in Chapters 6 and 7 comprise aspects of competition through tree interactions, and eco-evolutionary modelling, including optimisation and game theory, a topical and fast developing area of ecological modelling under climate change. Chapters 8 and 9 are devoted to parameter estimation and model calibration, showing how empirical and process-based methods and related data sources can be bridged to provide reliable predictions. Chapter 10 demonstrates some practical applications and possible future development paths of the approach. The approach in this book is unique in that the models presented are based on ecological theory and research findings, yet sufficiently simple in structure to lend themselves readily to practical application, such as regional estimates of harvest potential, or satellite-based monitoring of growth. The applicability is also related to the objective of bridging empirical and process-based approaches through data assimilation methods that combine research-based ecological measurements with standard forestry data. Importantly, the ecological basis means that it is possible to build on the existing models to advance the approach as new research findings become available.

Lee Frelich provides a major contribution to the study of temperate-zone forest dynamics by considering three important themes: the combined influence of wind, fire, and herbivory on the successional trajectories and structural characteristics of forests; the interaction of deciduous and evergreen tree species to form mosiacs; and the significance of temporal and spatial scale with regard to the overall impact of disturbances. These themes are explored via case studies from the forests in the Lake States of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, where the presence of large primary forest remnants provides a unique opportunity to study the long-term dynamics of near-boreal, pine, and hardwood-hemlock forests.