Forests contain two thirds of terrestrial biodiversity and store as much carbon and is currently in the atmosphere. We are combining new abstractions of forests, with various sources of data, via Bayesian statistics, to produce useful, predictive models of forest dynamics.
Our work in forest dynamics includes a number of projects, involving a number of international collaborators, spanning scales from the stand, through regions, to the globe. Throughout, the focus is on developing accurate, predictive models that could be usefully applied to improve our understanding of, and ability to manage, the world's forest resources. This research focus is led by Drew Purves. Currently active projects in forest dynamics include:
* Scaling from trees to forests
* Understanding and predicting tree mortality
* Predictive modelling of forest VOC emissions
Drew Purves on Modelling Forest Dynamics:
mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/research/MSRC/eitr/Forest_Dynamics.wmv
- Drew Purves, The demography of range boundaries vs range cores in Eastern US tree species, in Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B, vol. 276, pp. 1477-1484, 25 February 2009
- Jeremy W Lichstein, Jonathan Dushoff, Kiona Ogle, Anping Chen, Drew W Purves, John Caspersen, and Stephen W Pacala, [in press] Unlocking the forest inventory data: relating individual-tree performance to unmeasured environmental factors, in Ecological Applications, 2009
- Daniel Montoya, Drew W Purves, Itziar Rodriguez, and Miguel A Zavala, [in press] Do species distribution models explain spatial structure within tree species ranges?, in Global Ecology and Biogeography, 2009
- Nikolay Strigul, Denis Pristinski, Drew W Purves, Jonathan Dushoff, and Stephen W Pacala, Scaling from trees to forests: tractable macroscopic equations for forest dynamics, in Ecological Monographs, vol. 78, no. 4, pp. 523-545, November 2008
- Drew W Purves, Jeremy W Lichstein, Nikolay Strigul, and Stephen W Pacala, Predicting and understanding forest dynamics using a simple tractable model, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 29 October 2008
- Drew W Purves and Stephen W Pacala, Predictive Models of Forest Dynamics, in Science, vol. 320, no. 5882, pp. 1452-1453, 13 June 2008
- Thomas P Adams, Drew W Purves, and Stephen W Pacala, Understanding height-structured competition in forests: is there an R* for light?, in Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B, vol. 274, no. 1628, pp. 3039-3047, January 2007
- Drew W Purves, Jeremy W Lichstein, and Stephen W Pacala, Crown Plasticity and Competition for Canopy Space: A New Spatially Implicit Model Parameterized for 250 North American Tree Species, in PLoS-One, vol. 2, no. 9, pp. e870, January 2007
- Drew W Purves, Miguel A Zavala, Kiona Ogle, Fernando Prieto, and Jose M Rey Benayas, Environmental heterogeneity, bird-mediated directed dispersal, and oak woodland dynamics in Mediterranean Spain, in Ecological Monographs, 2007
