Ecological forest models

Ecological Models were developed to model natural and management-induced disturbances in cultivated, semi-natural or natural forests, they model long-term ecosystem dynamics involving spatially explicit information on recruitment, growth and mortality of individual trees. For example, the gap models, which deal with population succession, define and track the growth performance of individual trees competing and growing in a restricted area, the gap. Modelling is based on a global eco-physiologically based perception of competition for resources, and on allometric relationships between mensurational characteristics of individual trees. Such models perform best when reflecting the qualitative impacts of disturbances on forest dynamics, however few models are suitable for operational decision-making in forest management.