Modelling forest regeneration strategies through the development of a spatio-temporal growth interaction model

Abstract

Forest regeneration methods are an important factor in the generation of future forest spatial patterns. However, the difficulty of obtaining experimental data to study such interfering operations, mainly due the long life-span of tree species, has limited the analysis of these key silvicultural tools. Stochastic simulation of such real forest scenarios (i.e. simulated forest) is, therefore, a practical alternative to analyse such prescribed treatments. Here we adapt the Renshaw and Sarkka model to study forest regeneration strategies following the previous work of Renshaw et al. (Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess, 2008). We show that the highly flexible Renshaw and Sarkka algorithm to generate marked point configurations evolving through continuous time is easily adapted to enable the simulation and the comparative study of different forest regeneration methods. In particular, we consider two important regeneration strategies, namely, the shelterwood and the single-tree selection methods due to their forest importance. The results obtained strongly suggested that combining the birth-growth–spatial interaction model with a spatially explicit regeneration algorithm results in a flexible and realistic mechanism to mimic real forest dynamics.