Validation of a new spatially explicit process-based model (HETEROFOR) to simulate structurally and compositionally complex forest stands in eastern North America
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract. Process-based forest growth models with spatially explicit representation are relevant tools to investigate innovative silviculture practices and/or climate change effects because they are based on key ecophysiological processes and account for the effects of local competition for resources on tree growth. Such models are rare and are often calibrated for a very limited number of species and rarely for mixed and/or uneven-aged stands, and none are suitable for the temperate forests of Québec. The aim of this study was to calibrate and evaluate HETEROFOR (HETEROgeneous FORest), a process-based and spatially explicit model based on resource sharing, for 23 functionally diverse tree species in forest stands with contrasting species compositions and environmental conditions in southern Quebec. Using data from the forest inventory of Quebec, we evaluated the ability of HETEROFOR to predict the short-term growth (5–16 years) of these species at the tree and stand levels and the long-term dynamics (120 years) of red and sugar maple stands. The comparison between the prediction quality of the calibration and evaluation datasets showed the robustness of the model performance in predicting individual-tree growth. The model reproduced correctly the individual basal area increment (BAI) of the validation dataset, with a mean Pearson's correlation coefficient of 0.56 and a mean bias of 18 %. Our results also highlighted that considering tree position is of importance for predicting individual-tree growth most accurately in complex stands with both vertically and horizontally heterogeneous structures. The model also showed a good ability to reproduce BAI at the stand level, both for monospecific (bias of −3.7 %; Pearson's r=0.55) and multi-species stands (bias of −9.1 %; Pearson's r=0.62). Long-term simulations of red maple and sugar maple showed that HETEROFOR was able to accurately predict the growth (basal area and height) and mortality processes from the seedling stage to the mature stand. Our results suggest that HETEROFOR is a reliable option to simulate forest growth in southern Quebec and to test new forestry practices under future climate scenarios.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".