Additive aboveground biomass equations based on different predictors for natural Tilia Linn

Abstract

Biomass is a basic quantitative character of forest ecosystem. Biomass data are foundation of researching many forestry and ecology problems. Accurate quantification of tree biomass is critical and essential for calculating carbon storage, as well as for studying climate change, forest health, forest productivity, nutrient cycling, etc. Constructing biomass models is considered a good approach to estimate forest biomass. Based on biomass data of 97 sampling trees of natural Tilia Linn. in Xiaoxing'an Mountains and Zhangguangcai ranges, three additive systems of individual tree biomass equations were developed: based on tree diameter at breast height (D) only, based on tree diameter at breast height and height (H), and based on the best models. The nonlinear seemly unrelated regression was used to estimate the parameters in the additive system of biomass equations. The heteroscedasticity in model residuals was addressed by applying a unique weight function to each equation. The individual tree biomass model validation was accomplished by Jackknifing technique. The results showed that three additive systems of individual tree biomass equations could fit and predict the biomass of Tilia Linn. well (adjusted coefficient of determination Ra2>0.84, mean predicted error percentage MPE<8.5%, mean absolute error MAE<16.3 kg,mean standard error percentage MPSE<28.5%). The biomass equations of stem and aboveground were better than biomass equations of branch, foliage and crown. Adding total tree height and crown factor in the additive systems of biomass equations could significantly improve model fitting performance and predicting precision (Ra2 improved from 0.01 to 0.04, MAE decreased from 0.01 to 4.55 kg), narrow the confidence interval of the predicted value and the biomass of stem, foliage and aboveground were increased more than the biomass of branch and crown. In general, the equations of the additive system based on the best models produced the best model fitting, followed by that of the additive system based on D and H, and that based on D. It was essential to develop biomass model by adding total tree height and crown factor.