Difference between revisions of "Arne Pommerening's Forest Biometrics & Quantitative Ecology Lab"
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== About Crancod == | == About Crancod == | ||
| + | It is widely acknowledged that spatial forest structure is a driving factor behind growth processes and that forest growth, in return, influences the structural composition of woodlands. Also any impact on forests is primarily a change of spatial forest structure. | ||
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| + | In the last few decades an impressive number of structural indices have been developed to quantify spatial forest structure and it has also been suggested that they can be used as surrogate measures for quantifying biodiversity (Pommerening, 2002). Of particular interest in this regard is the development of a family of individual tree neighbourhood-based indices, which are measures of small-scale variations in tree positions, species and dimensions, developed by Gadow and colleagues (Gadow and Hui, 2002). Especially when expressed as frequency distributions these indices offer valuable information on spatial woodland structure. | ||
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| + | The CRANCOD program is a scientific laboratory for analysing and experimenting with structural indices. CRANCOD has been designed for use with large research plots with full enumeration of trees but in addition offers the opportunity to analyse complete inventory data consisting of multiple sample plots of circular or rectangular shape and varying plot size based on a systematic grid. The program has in built flexibility with the user able to select the number of neighbour trees and choose between six different methods of edge correction. CRANCOD can even be used to analyse research plots/inventories for which spatial information has not been recorded. | ||
Revision as of 17:24, 8 May 2012
Crancod - A program for the analysis and reconstruction of spatial forest structure
About Crancod
It is widely acknowledged that spatial forest structure is a driving factor behind growth processes and that forest growth, in return, influences the structural composition of woodlands. Also any impact on forests is primarily a change of spatial forest structure.
In the last few decades an impressive number of structural indices have been developed to quantify spatial forest structure and it has also been suggested that they can be used as surrogate measures for quantifying biodiversity (Pommerening, 2002). Of particular interest in this regard is the development of a family of individual tree neighbourhood-based indices, which are measures of small-scale variations in tree positions, species and dimensions, developed by Gadow and colleagues (Gadow and Hui, 2002). Especially when expressed as frequency distributions these indices offer valuable information on spatial woodland structure.
The CRANCOD program is a scientific laboratory for analysing and experimenting with structural indices. CRANCOD has been designed for use with large research plots with full enumeration of trees but in addition offers the opportunity to analyse complete inventory data consisting of multiple sample plots of circular or rectangular shape and varying plot size based on a systematic grid. The program has in built flexibility with the user able to select the number of neighbour trees and choose between six different methods of edge correction. CRANCOD can even be used to analyse research plots/inventories for which spatial information has not been recorded.
