Influence of weather and climate variables on the basal area growth of individual shortleaf pine trees
This article is part of a larger document. View the larger document here.Abstract
An individual-tree basal area growth model previously developed for even-aged naturally occurring shortleaf pine trees (Pinus echinata Mill.) in western Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma did not include weather variables. Individual-tree growth and yield modeling of shortleaf pine has been carried out using the remeasurements of over 200 plots permanently established on the Ozark and Ouachita National Forests during the period 1985-1987. Different basal area growth models for shortleaf pine have been proposed previously, such as a model that was part of a distance-independent individual-tree simulator (Lynch and others 1999) and a model that utilized nonlinear mixed modeling of basal area growth (Budhathoki and others 2008). However, none of the previous studies incorporated the influence of the weather and climate variables in the individual-tree growth prediction models.