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Module 1.3

Describe and apply models to articulate present and future stand conditions

Overall objectives of Module 1.3 are to enhance students’ knowledge and comprehension of models commonly used to describe stand structure and project stand development and, by extension, forest development over time. Examples of the former include standard yield tables that are frequently used to estimate stand-level attributes of interest for forest management such as volume on an area basis using relatively few easily obtained measures of tree size, and yield curves that similarly relate measures of tree size to merchantable volume.

Models used to project stand development tend to rely upon quantifying competitive interactions among trees such as size-density, density-yield and self-thinning relationships, and using such information to project growth and yield over time. Site index models that make use of age-height relationships to model site productivity, diameter distribution models, gap models, neighbourhood models, resource based stand models, and resource- and individual-based spatially explicit models of stand development (e.g. SORTIE) will also be examined.

Module Objectives

  • Identify, use, and explain predictive tools/models;
  • Explain their strengths and weaknesses.

Module Schedule

This course involves a combination of recorded lectures, readings, assignments and participation in semi-synchronous online discussion forums and synchronous tutorials with instructors and other participants over an 8-week period.

See course content below to get started!

Course Content

Getting Started

  • Getting Started

    Welcome to Module 1.3

Week 1

  • Introductory Lectures

    Introductory core lectures using knowledge elements 1.3.1 and 1.3.2 as the organizational framework to introduce key concepts and related content

  • Core lecture 1: Approaches to understanding and quantifying tree competition

    Transition matrix models, Leslie matrices, growth curves, standard yield tables, classical forest yield curves, uses of yield curves, site-index, crown class, canopy stratification, density-yield relationships, reproductive allometry, density management diagrams, growth and yield in thinned stands, size variability as an indicator of competition, measures of size variability, growth-size relationships

  • Readings

    Forest Ecology: A foundation for sustainable management; Patching together the future of forest modelling: Implementing a spatial model in the 2009 Romeo Malette Forest Management Plan

Week 2

  • Core Lecture 2: From stands to forests

    Forest modeling definitions, relationships of stand to forest parameters, agent-based and pattern oriented models, yield tables, stand-level growth and yield simulators, transition matrix models, diameter distribution models, gap models, neighborhood models, resource-based stand models, physiological process models, simulation models

  • Supplemental Reading (not mandatory)

    Assessing forest management scenarios on an Aboriginal territory through simulation modeling

  • Discussion Forum 1.3a

Week 3

  • Online Tutorial

  • Assignment #1

Week 4

  • Discussion Forum 1.3b

Week 5

  • Submission: Assignment #1

  • Assignment #2

Week 6

  • Proposal Submission: Assignment #2

Week 7

  • Online Tutorial

Week 8

  • Submission: Assignment #2