Summary:
Published in Canadian Journal of Forest Research 31: 950-959
The constancy of balsam fir (Abies balsamea (L.) Mill.) self-thinning relationship has been investigated among four study areas located in different ecological regions of Québec's humid boreal forest. These four study areas contained respectively 348, 252, 146, and 55 observations (plots x measures) sampled over a period of up to 40 years. A self-thinning fitting method was developed to position objectively the self-thinning lines but, moreover, to allow comparisons among the different study areas. This method relies on principal component analysis to estimate the self-thinning line parameters and on the "jackknife" procedure to provide a standard error of these estimates. Results demonstrate a concordance for the slope (p = 0.136) and the intercept (p = 0.148) among self-thinning relationships of those study areas. The combination of these four study areas in one large data set, to provide a general estimation of balsam fir self-thinning Iine, has given a slope of -1.441 with a 4.114 intercept which is in agreement with the -3/2 power law of self-thinning. ln this study, this law was able to describe the size-density relationship of stands of various ages and growing within different conditions as expressed by the different ecological regions.
Sector(s):
Forests
Catégorie(s):
Scientific Article
Theme(s):
Forestry Research, Forests, Silviculture
Departmental author(s):
Author(s):
BÉGIN, Éric, Jean BÉGIN, Louis BÉLANGER, Louis-Paul RIVEST and Stéphane TREMBLAY
Year of publication:
2001
How to get the publication:
Keyword(s):
auto-éclaircie, relations dimensions-densité, tordeuse des bourgeons de l'épinette, mathématique, sylviculture des forêts naturelles résineuses, sylviculture des forêts boréales naturelles, éclaircie précommerciale, éclaircie commerciale, densité des peuplements, sapin baumier, Abies balsamea, sylviculture des forêts naturelles, silviculture of natural forests, self-thinning, size-density relationship, mathematic, silviculture of natural boreal forests, precommercial thinning, commercial thinning, stand density, balsam fir, silviculture and yield of natural forests – softwood stands