Progress and prospect of research on forest landscape model

Abstract

The Forest Landscape Model (FLM) is an efficiency tool of quantified expression of forest ecosystem’s structure and function. This paper, on the basis of identifying FLM, according to the stage of development, summarizes the development characteristics of the model, which includes the theoretical foundation of mathematical model, FLM of stand-scale, primary development of spatial landscape model, rapid development of ecosystem process model as the priority, and developing period of structure and process driven by multi-factor. According to the characteristics of different FLMs, this paper classifies the existing FLM in terms of mechanism, property and application, and elaborates the identifications, advantages and disadvantages of different types of models. It summarizes and evaluates the main application fields of existing models from two aspects which are the changes of spatial pattern and ecological process. Eventually, this paper presents FLM’s challenges and directions of development in the future, including: (1) more prominent service on the practical strategy of forest management’s objectives; (2) construction of multi-modules and multi-plugin to satisfy landscape research demand in various conditions; (3) adoption of high resolution’s spatial-temporal data; (4) structural construction of multi-version module; (5) improving the spatial suitability of model application.