A review of mechanistic modelling of wind damage risk to forests

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Summary This paper reviews the current status of mechanistic models for wind damage risk assessment, describing model structure, applicability, validation and current limitations. We focus particularly on the hybrid mechanistic/empirical models GALES and HWIND, which have been designed for calculating wind damage risk at the stand level within uniform forests and which are the most widely adopted models within the research community. These models have been integrated with different methods for predicting the local wind climate in order to calculate the probability of wind damage in a number of different countries. We also discuss ongoing modelling work and proposals for future development in order to deal with complex forest structures and to predict the wind damage risk of individual trees within stands through the integration of mechanistic risk models with forest growth and yield models within a geographical information system framework. This kind of model integration will enable spatial representation of tree lists and damage propagation and allow managers to evaluate the effect of different harvesting and thinning scenarios on the risk of windthrow of both stands and individual trees within a stand.