Quantitative indices to identify succession stages of managed Pinus massoniana forest
-
-
Abstract
Forest growth under management is a gradual process, which is resulted from interaction of nature
and man disturbance. Different forest succession stages have specific attributes, playing a guiding role in
forest management. Appropriate management can positively affect forest growth, otherwise, the effect is
little or even negative. Consequently, identifying forest succession stage has significant influence on
improving forest management level. Five forest stages, i. e. forest establishment stage, competition
differentiation stage, selection stage, close-to-nature sand naturalness permanent forest stage, were
presented based on previous researches. Stepwise discriminant (Wilks' Lambda) was used to select
important indices among initial 13 stand indices. Age, average DBH of dominate tree species, ratio of
tree volume to total volume, stand basal area, and DBH variable coefficient were selected to classify
forest stage. Fisher discriminant function and Bayes discriminant function were established referring to the
five indices mentioned above, the classification results were 94% of training samples correctly classified,
89% of verification samples correctly classified, and ratio of tree volume to total volume is the best index
to identify forest stage.
-
-