Climatic factors defining the height growth curve of forest species

Abstract

The aim of this study was to modify several existing biological models by including several predictive variables that take into account the effect of climatic factors on tree height growth. Tree height was measured from 2007 to 2014 on 18 trees for each of the following species: Eucalyptus urophylla × Eucalyptus grandis, Parapiptadenia rigida, Peltophorum dubium, Mimosa scabrella and Schizolobium parahybae. Different existing nonlinear models were fitted to the observed data, and the best fitting models were selected. The inclusion of climatic variables into the selected models (mainly minimum temperature and rainfall) improved their predictions of tree height growth with age, and provided more accurate estimates than those obtained by traditional nonlinear models. Simulations were carried out to explore the variation of tree height growth under different minimum temperature and precipitation regimes. The effects of frost and rainfall variation on height growth curves and their consequences for forest management are discussed.

Keywords

• Von Bertalanffy-Richards’ Model
• Mean Minimum Temperature
• Rainfall
• Frost