The Simulation of Tree Growth in the Light of Environmental Effects

Abstract

In the fields of forestry and horticulture, experts need reliable forecasts about the growth of trees. It is a very complicated process affected by a lot of external factors (weather, light conditions, other objects, etc.), and the already existing applications can give only rough estimations. This paper presents a novel solution for this problem, based on the simulation of the growth from the first day of the tree. During the simulation the program takes into account all the properties of the species and the surrounding environment, where these modifiers can be easily changed. The simulation can handle a group of trees at once, these can affect both their own and their neighbours’ development. The state of the simulation can be displayed as three dimensional models at any time of the process. These show the distortion effects of the environment, giving a realistic model about the integration of the trees into their environments. Because this simulation is computationally intensive, the paper also presents some methods for accelerating it with graphics accelerators.