Keyword: landscape dynamics

Second Forest Vegetation Simulator Conference; February 12-14, 2002; Fort Collins, CO.

The Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) is a computer program that projects the development of forest stands in the United States and British Columbia, Canada. The proceedings of the second FVS conference, held in Fort Collins, CO, includes 34 papers dealing with applications of FVS that range from the stand-level through full-scale landscape analyses.

Exploring the role of fire, succession, climate, and weather on landscape dynamics using comparative modeling

An assessment of the relative importance of vegetation change and disturbance as agents of landscape change under current and future climates would (1) provide insight into the controls of landscape dynamics, (2) help inform the design and development of coarse scale spatially explicit ecosystem models such as Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs), and (3) guide future land management and planning.

Using the Forest Vegetation Simulator to reconstruct historical stand conditions in the Colorado Front Range

Presettlement ponderosa pine/Douglas-fir forests of the Colorado Front Range were open and heterogeneous. Logging, grazing, and fire suppression over past 100 to150 years have altered stand structure by changing diameter distributions and increasing overstory density.

The Kane Experimental Forest carbon inventory: Carbon reporting with FVS

As the number of state and regional climate change agreements grows, so does the need to assess the carbon implications of planned forest management actions. At the operational level, producing detailed stock estimates for the primary carbon pools becomes time-consuming and cumbersome.

Development of external regeneration models for FVS: Another wrench in the toolkit

Despite more than three decades of development, only one full-featured regeneration model has been developed for the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS).

Development of FVSOntario: A Forest Vegetation Simulator Variant and application software for Ontario

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources is leading a government-industry partnership to develop an Ontario variant of the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS). Based on the Lake States variant and the PrognosisBC user-interface, the FVSOntarioproject is motivated by a need to model the impacts of intensive forest management strategies and the multiple ecological and social objectives faced by today’s resource managers.

Building the ECON extension: Functionality and lessons learned

The functionality of the ECON extension to FVS is described with emphasis on the ability to dynamically interact with all elements of the FVS simulation process. Like other extensions, ECON is fully integrated within FVS.

Predicting the recruitment of established regeneration into the sapling size class following partial cutting in the Acadian Forest Region: Using long-term observations to assess the performance of FVS-NE

Forest managers are increasingly called upon to provide long-term predictions of forest development. The dynamics of regeneration establishment, survival and subsequent recruitment of established seedlings to larger size classes is a critical component of these forecasts, yet remains a weak link in available models.

Evaluating growth models: A case study using PrognosisBC

The ability of the PrognosisBC (Version 3.0) growth model to predict tree and stand growth was assessed against a series of remeasured permanent sample plots, including some which had been precommercially thinned. In addition, the model was evaluated for logical consistency across a variety of stand structures using simulation. By the end of the evaluation process, we were pleased with the performance of the model.

Improving longleaf pine mortality predictions in the Southern Variant of the Forest Vegetation Simulator

The Southern Variant of the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS-SN) is made up of individual submodels that predict tree growth, recruitment and mortality. Forest managers on Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, discovered biologically unrealistic longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) size-density predictions at large diameters when using FVS-SN to project red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis) habitat. Inventory data from Ft.