Welcome on the homepage of SimForTree

SimForTree is being developed by partners from the Universities of Gent, Antwerp and Leuven. The project is financed by the Flemish IWT

The project ended 12/2010. The final report, databases and model will be available online by 1/3/2011

Flyer SimForTree          

Project titel

A decision support tool for sustainable forest management based on ecophysiological analysis and simulation of the variability in tree development

 

I. Objectives

The strategic objective of the consortium is to develop a physiological forest-wood chain model (SimForTree) which is able to compare and evaluate different sustainable forest management strategies with respect to their impact on wood quality, ecosystem functioning and forest structural development (which is of importance in maintaining ecosystem diversity). The work of the consortium will be developed along three main lines: (i) an observational line that investigates the tree and forest variability under different sites and management regimes; (ii) a model development line that integrates/links both existing knowledge and the new information from the experimental work into a validated and operational model with different front-ends; and (iii) a simulation line that applies the capacities and power of the model as a decision-support system for different end-users.
The existing physiological model ANAFORE (Analysis of Forest Ecosystems) - developed by the Research Group Plant and Vegetation Ecology, partner 1 of the consortium - is used as a starting point and will be gradually elaborated to meet the following main purposes:

1. Characterisation of site impact on external tree structure and variability; phenology, site-variability, phenotypical features, management, competition for light and nutrients.
2. Increased understanding of wood formation and variability of wood structure in relation to climate, phenology, species-dependent behaviour, biomechanics.
3. Development, validation and verification of a physiological forest-wood chain model; develop three different front-ends that will emphasize different aspects of the forest-wood chain.
4. Case studies, to illustrate the capacities and power of the model as a decision-support system for different forestry applications.
    

As the physiological forest-wood chain model SimForTree is conceived as an integrating tool, it has potential applications within the forestry sector in its broadest sense. The non-academic target audience of this project can be separated into two broad categories: (i) the forest-wood sector and (ii) the environmental sector. The academic target audience consists of all scientists involved in forest-related research. The different front-ends of SimForTree will be developed to meet the needs of each of these target groups.

The Forest-Wood Chain SimForTree
The Forest-Wood Chain SimForTree version of the model will provide useful information to the main actors of the forestry-wood chain, being the forestry sector (at the low-end input side) and the wood sector (at the high-end output side of the model chain). Implications of changing policies or management as well as of altering demands of the wood industry can be evaluated.
On the low-end side (forestry sector), forest owners, managers and policy makers will be able to evaluate existing resources and predict future ones, taking into account one or several objectives, such as sustainability, structural development, forest conversion and tree quality (evaluate the effects of thinning and pruning). The output of the model will allow making an assessment of the economic value of the standing and future resources, giving an optimal planning and inventory of management activities up till harvesting.

Environmental SimForTree
Another use of the SimForTree model is for solving environmental assessment questions. Both environmental specialists and environmental policy makers will find in the model an excellent tool for long-term scenario analyses on effects of forest management, climatic change (temperature, precipitation) and/or ozone levels on e.g. the carbon and water balance, economic yield, forest structural development (species composition, horizontal and vertical structural diversity). In this application, the model output focuses on large-scale general effects at a yearly time-step, making it directly useful and interpretable for the target user group.

Ecosystem SimForTree
The most complete and complex version of the SimForTree model will be used for scientific purposes. The physiological basis of the model allows its use for scientific hypothesis testing and further model development in the field of tree physiology and functional wood anatomy.