Modeling Forest Trees and Stands

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.

1. Introduction. - 2. Tree Form and Stem Taper. - 3. Tree-stem Volume Equations. - 4. Tree Weight and Biomass Estimation. - 5. Quantifying Tree Crowns. - 6. Growth Functions. - 7. Evaluating Site Quality. - 8. Quantifying Stand Density. - 9. Indices of Individual-tree Competition. - 10. Modeling Forest Stand Development. - 11. Whole-stand Models for Even-aged Stands. - 12. Diameter-distribution Models for Even-aged Stands. - 13. Size-class Models for Even-aged Stands. - 14. Individual-tree Models for Even-aged Stands. - 15. Growth and Yield Models for Uneven-aged Stands. - 16. Modeling Response to Silvicultural Treatments. - 17. Modeling Wood Characteristics. - 18. Model Implementation and Evaluation.