AAIR Project No PL 94-2392

Silvicultural strategies for predicting damage to forests from wind, fire and snow.

Task 3

A clickable map of this task is available that shows the relationships between tasks, deliverables and the participating organizations.

Tree-level Models to Predict Cirumstances for Damage

Objectives
Derivation of computer mathematical models for determining the wind speed and snow load required to damage trees. This will cover a variety of species with different tree and site characteristics. Both empirically based and mechanistic models will be developed and compared. For determining the circumstances for fire, models for leaf area index (LAI) estimation using biometric data calibration of septometer measurements with a biometric model will be developed.

Methodology
The empricial models will utilise the data provided by task 2 to derive mathematical relationships between the critical wind and snow loadings requirements for damage and the individual tree and site characteristics these relationships will be derived using standard statistical techniques. An existing mechanistic model developed by participant 01 will be improved and tested against data in task 2. This model attempts to fully describe the mechanistic behaviour of trees under wind and snow loading. the empirical and mechanistic approaches will be compared in order to improve our methods for estimating critical wind speed and snow loading. Critical amounts of biomass on the risk of fire will be estimated using septomater, telerelascope and other standard biometric equipment. Destructive LAI measurements and correlation with biometric data will be performed to make generalisations of LAI estimation to plot and stand level possible. Estimation of canopy optical depth will be used to attempt a solution of Beer-Lambert equation for non-destructive LAI estimation.

Alistair Law - a.law@macaulay.ac.uk

Last modified: Mon Jun 24 16:48:23 BST 1996