Forestry

ABSTRACT

Forest models have been used in forestry since the very beginning of regular forest management. Forest models are used for predicting the development of trees or forest stands with regard to tree, stand, site and forest management factors. The basic processes of forest stand dynamics are tree growth, regeneration and recruitment, and tree mortality. In Slovenia, we fell behind in terms of the development of own forest simulators compared to other forested countries. The reasons can be found partly in the high structural heterogeneity and diverse mixture of stands, which is the result of site diversity and small-scale management, which makes it difficult to produce stand simulators, and partly in the complete neglect of this research area. In the project, the Chair of Forest Management and Ecosystem Analysis at the Department of Forestry and Renewable Forest Resources, Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana will

• develop a conceptual model of a forest development simulator, which will be the basis for a computer decision support system, 
• prepare the protocols for using the data from Slovenia Forest Service,
• develop empirical models to describe the diameter growth, recruitment and mortality of trees, and develop probability density functions to describe the diameter distribution of stands and management regimes,
• develop a prototype of a simulator in a way that it will enable upgrading into a modern decision support system in forest management planning, and
• test the simulator on selected site types. The project partner Slovenia Forestry Institute will test the functionality of two existing large-scale forest development models and assess the possibilities of using and further developing either of them based on the simulations for several climate scenarios and management regimes.

The methods used include generalized linear and mixed models and simulations of variables with the required parameters. The final result of the project will be the simulator in "beta" version, suitable for first testing among users. In developing the model, we will cooperate with the University of Applied Sciences in Bern, Switzerland.

THE PHASES OF THE PROJECT AND THEIR REALIZATION

SICRIS link