FORECE: A forest succession model for southern Central Europe

Technical Report · Thu Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 1987

OSTI ID:5729437

Kienast, F

A general forest succession model that simulates forest stand development for the most common site conditions in the southern part of Central Europe (with emphasis on Switzerland) is described. The model provides a useful tool for testing hypotheses about forest succession and enables the user to evaluate the impacts of natural and human disturbances on forest communities. Written in FORTRAN, it is a JABOWA-type simulator (Botkin et al., 1972) and is based on existing succession models for forests in eastern and western North America. Birth, growth, and death of 31 species of individual trees are simulated on a multitude of 1/12-ha plots. The successional characteristics of each replicate are subsequently averaged to obtain the forest development on a landscape level. Existing light in the forest stand, climatic conditions, soil properties, and other environmental factors control the growth of each individual tree. Species-specific input data such as light requirements and drought resistance were obtained from silvics information and phytosociological descriptions. Compared with previous simulators, some major modifications were made, including the incorporation of the indicator value concept of Ellenberg (1978). This approach is partially optional and is used to describe the ecophysiological behavior of the 31 different tree species incorporated in the model.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-84OR21400
• OSTI ID: 5729437
• Report Number(s): ORNL/TM-10575; ON: DE88003736
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

510100* -- Environment
Terrestrial-- Basic Studies-- (-1989)
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
COMPUTER CODES
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DOCUMENT TYPES
ECOLOGICAL SUCCESSION
EUROPE
F CODES
FORESTS
FORTRAN
MANUALS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
SIMULATION