Forest Stand Structure
Mike Saunders and Bob Wagner
The advent of GIS and geo-statistics is allowing a re-examination of our traditional models of forest stand development in uneven-aged stands. Through use of 3-dimensional measures of structure (Figure 5.1), stem-maps of both the FERP plots and the long-term U.S. Forest Service plots at the Penobscot Experimental Forest will allow testing of alternative models of forest development as stands vary by species and diameter distributions.
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Figure 5.1. Example of a 3-D structural index recently developed by E. K. Zenner (Ecol. Appl., 10: 800-810). Basically, this index is a ratio of the area of the 3-D surface in (A) to the area of triangles in (B). These points are calculated from stem-map data and a size variable such as tree height or diameter. | |