An introduction to environmental key factors regulating forest
plantation growth, together with state-of-the-art methods to
interpolate productivity and responses to silvicultural
treatments accounting for process uncertainty using a data
assimilation framework.
Athena Title
Precision Silviculture
Prerequisite
FORS 4610/6610-4610L/6610L and FORS 4620/6620
Pre or Corequisite
(FANR 3800 and 3800L) or GEOG 4300/6300 or GEOG 4370/6370-4370L/6370L or GEOG 4370E/6370E
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
At the end of the class, students should be able to parameterize simple process-based models using available environmental and soil information to draw inference about possible resource limitation scenarios in order to provide better silviculture prescriptions.
Topical Outline
Part I Micrometheorological
Calculating global and net radiation
Calculating vapor pressure deficit
Calculating potential evapotranspiration
Cleaning and validating climatic series
Part II Soil physical variables determining productivity
The physics of soil and water and its relevance to stand productivity
Soil pedo-transfer functions and water storage capacity
Part III Terrain analysis
Calculating terrain attributes out of digital elevation models
Calculating secondary terrain attributes
Remote sensing variables important for forest production
Examples of terrain analysis for environmental data interpolation
Part IV Modeling physiological processes
Photosynthesis models (Farquhar photosynthesis model)
Big-leaf models (3PG)
Carbon partitioning (biomass model)
Empirical approaches
Part IV Merging soil environment and tree data to perform better
Prescriptions models that incorporate environmental variables
Process-based model concepts to help guide silviculture prescriptions
Empirical growth and yield models to help guide silviculture prescriptions
Model parameterization
Inference using spatially explicit precision silviculture models
