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A framework for individual-based forest landscape and disturbance model (ILAND)

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Description:

Climate change is a major challenge for sustainable forest management. Impacts on the disturbance regime are particularly relevant in this regard. In a sound science-based sustainable forest ecosystem management approach (SFEM) potential changes in climate and disturbance regimes need to be considered explicitly. Disturbance dynamics, however, are still poorly understood especially in ecosystems with interacting, climate-sensitive disturbance agents. Currently, most available model approaches suffer either from a limited spatial extent to address large scale interacting disturbance regimes (i.e. stand models) or a coarse structural resolution with regard to the information needs in resource management (i.e. landscape models). The objective of the proposed research is to bridge this gap in (i) developing an individual-based landscape modelling framework; (ii) adopting process-oriented disturbance modules and utilizing existing ecological understanding to model disturbance interactions; (iii) testing the model framework in two case studies in the temperate forest biome. To successfully address (interactions between) disturbances as emerging property of the modelled system as well as to provide relevant levels of information in the context of SFEM an individual-based, a process-oriented landscape modelling approach is proposed. The development is based on bringing together recent advances in forest landscape modelling with efficient algorithms of modelling individual-based tree competition and process-based production. In this context, the individual-based forest landscape and disturbance model "iLand" has been developed to explicitly simulates the principal adaptive agents in forest ecosystems, i.e. individual trees over areas of several thousands of hectares. The model has been successfully tested against empirical data from a variety of forest ecosystems in Oregon, USA and Austria. Overall, the modelling framework aims at contributing to questions of SFEM under changing climate and disturbance regimes and facilitating a landscape perspective in forest resource management.

Project information

Lead

UNIVERSITAET FUER BODENKULTUR WIEN (AT)

Partners

no information available

Source of funding

FP 7 - PEOPLE

Reference information

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Published in Climate-ADAPT Jun 07 2016   -   Last Modified in Climate-ADAPT Dec 12 2023

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