Arne Pommerening's Forest Biometrics & Quantitative Ecology Lab

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Screenshot of a NetLogo implementation of the individual-based shot-noise model published in Pommerening et al. (2011)‎ Individual-based models are specialised on interactions between organisms and I am using them for examining how marked point patterns of trees evolve through time.
Philodendron International

Introduction

This website and all associated computer code are part of a research area, which is dedicated to systems analysis of forest ecosystems, an important branch of ecological statistics integrating research on forest structure, tree growth analysis, monitoring and modelling.

All data, that are collected in forest ecosystems, have not only a temporal but also a spatial dimension. The properties of the whole system “forest”, e.g. forest growth and interactions between trees, to a large degree depend on the structure of this system. This has been known in forest science for a long time and has given rise to traditional terms such as “growing space” and “initial spacing”. In the last decades, new methods were developed in the statistical fields of point process statistics, geostatistics and random set statistics. These allow better and more detailed research of the interplay between spatial patterns and ecological processes. Apart from statistics and mathematics also other research fields such as physics and materials science have contributed to structural research. The latter subject area has coined the term of structure-property relationships. According to this term ecological processes not only leave traces as spatial patterns, but the spatial structure of materials or of a forest also determines to a large degree the properties of the system under study. This suggests that the results of forest management, e.g. forest products, but also natural regeneration responding to silvicultural systems, are examples of such system properties, which are largely determined by its structure. Structure-property relationships also apply to ecosystem services such as growth and yield and the provision of habitats and recreation. Competition and survival of trees are such properties as well as the sampling error of forest resource inventories, which is strongly correlated with spatial forest structure. Spatial statistics and inventory research are therefore closely related. Also any impact on forests - whether natural or human-induced - is primarily a change of forest structure. It is crucial for my research vision that the quantification, the understanding and the modelling of (spatial) woodland structure and its temporal evolution play a decisive role for the development of sampling and monitoring designs as well as for forest modelling. Spatial statistics and sampling theory share many overlaps which can be used as synergies. And there is certainly no sustainable silviculture and forest management without a proper understanding of woodland structure as every forest practitioner can tell you. The publications below, particularly those relating to reconstruction (Pommerening, 2006; Pommerening and Stoyan, 2008) prove and illustrate this research vision.

Self-Portrait

A group photo of my research team at Umeå in 2015: Arne Pommerening, Anton Grafström, Xin Zhao, Anders Muszta, Kenneth Nyström and Jaime Uría Díez (from left to right).

I work as Professor in Mathematical Statistics Applied to Forest Sciences at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Umeå. I am a theoretical forest scientist and my research areas include woodland structure analysis and modelling, spatio-temporal dynamics of plant point patterns, individual-based modelling with a focus on plant interactions, plant growth analysis, methods of quantifying and monitoring biodiversity and the analysis of human behaviour of selecting trees. Recently my group and I have also developed a keen interest in the question of how marked point patterns based on mapped plant communities evolve through time. The ontogenesis of such patterns can be studied by using individual-based models, which is an intriguing field of research. Much of my research is in quantitative ecology including computer-based simulation experiments. My research is strongly interdisciplinary and international.

I am maintaining a webblog on current issues in Forest Biometrics and you are welcome to follow the discussions on this address. I was the director of the Centre for Statistics (Statistics@SLU), a centre for statistical consultation and education at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and directed the Graduate School in Applied Statistics and Scientific Computing between 2014 and 2018.

Computer-based simulation experiments are one of my main research methods for investigating existing and developing new estimators of statistical characteristics related to forest sciences. For this purpose I often create my own research software by employing higher programming languages in combination with R, SAS or other existing packages.

I disseminate my research results mainly through publications in international peer-reviewed journals. On this websites you find information on some of my research and teaching work. As a service to the international research community I provide computer programs and code that I prepared for teaching and research so that you can explore, test and better understand the methods described in my work. You can find my lab also on [Twitter] and on [GitHub].

The Book: Methods in Individual-based Forest Ecology and Management

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In October 2019 our new book has been published with lots of details and insights from individual-based research, see the Springer website for more technical details. After repeated nudging and other encouragements from many well-meaning colleagues this is the long-awaited book written by myself and my colleague Pavel Grabarnik. As specialists in ecological modelling and plant-interaction research we have teamed up to provide the latest account of this intriguing and fast-growing research field. For both of us it has been a wonderful time and a truly scientific quest to work on the book manuscript. It was an inspiring experience to organise all ecological and statistical details in a consistent way and as a result a holistic view of individual-based forest ecology and management emerged by itself, which was not so clear to us when we devised the plan to write this book. It is our hope that many readers will join us in the joy of carrying out research in this field and advancing its theories and applications.

"The integration of methods in individual-based forest ecology is an eye-opener for readers who otherwise would need to read through scattered publications using quite different style, terms and notations."

Model-driven individual-based forest ecology has emerged in the 1990s and has given rise to a wealth of publications. At the same time, individual-based methods in forest management have been refined in a number of different countries and steadily grow in importance. For the first time this book integrates three main fields of forest ecology and management, i.e. tree/plant interactions, biometry of plant growth and human behaviour in forests. Individual-based forest ecology and management is an interdisciplinary research field with a focus on how the individual behaviour of plants contributes to the formation of spatial patterns that evolve through time. Key to this research is a strict bottom-up approach where the shaping and characteristics of plant communities are understood to be mostly the result of interactions between plants and between plants and humans. Written in a highly accessible style, the book provides essential information on theories and concepts of individual-based forest ecology and management and introduces point process statistics for analysing plant interactions. This is followed by methods of spatial modelling with a focus on individual-based models. The text is complemented by key concepts of modern plant growth science. Finally new methods of measuring, analysing and modelling human interaction with trees in forest ecosystems are introduced and discussed. For better access and understanding, all methods introduced in this book are accompanied by example code ready to use in the statistical software R and by worked examples. Additional technical details are given in three appendices.

The book is ideal for use in upper undergraduate and graduate courses across several disciplines such as forest science, ecology, biology, computer science and ecological statistics. At the same time the text provides ready access to a wide range of individual-based analysis and modelling methods for researchers and professionals.

Other advantages of the book include

  • Numerous R code and worked examples allow easy access and transparency of methods,
  • Three detailed appendices provide additional material on technical matters,
  • The book adopts an accessible style allowing non-specialists complete understanding,
  • Describes the process of gaining new knowledge in ecology through data analysis and modelling.

Keywords: Individual-based ecology, Individual-based model, Plant interaction, Point process statistics, Plant growth science, Human behaviour.

The Book: Continuous Cover Forestry - Theories, Concepts and Implementation

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In September 2023 my new book on Continuous Cover Forestry (CCF), sustainable forestry based on ecological principles, has been published with many photographs and illustrations, see the Wiley website for more technical details. The book was written to close an apparent gap and is not limited to a particular country or region of the world. As such the book presents generic contents that should be applicable in many parts of the world. A major incentive for writing the text was the current forestry debate in Sweden and the ongoing introduction of CCF in the country.

The book entitled Continuous Cover Forestry is an approach to forest management with over a century of history, one which applies ecological principles to the project of developing biologically diverse, structurally complex forests. Long used as the standard forest management method in Central Europe, CCF is generating renewed interest globally for its potential to develop and sustain forests that can withstand climate change impacts, maintain forest biodiversity in the face of major ecological challenges and offer better recreation experience. There is an increasingly urgent need for forest scientists and policymakers to be familiar with the toolkit provided by CCF.

Continuous Cover Forestry: Theories, Concepts, and Implementation provides a thorough, up-to-date introduction to the theory and practice of CCF. Beginning with an overview of the method's history and its foundational principles, the book provides detailed guidance for applying CCF methods to a range of ecological scenarios and forest types. The result is a clear, comprehensive portrait of this increasingly effective set of forestry tools.

Continuous Cover Forestry readers will also find:

  • Case studies throughout showing CCF at work in real-world forests
  • Detailed discussion of topics such as forest structure, transformation, silvicultural systems, training, carbon forestry, conservation and more
  • R code ready to take and apply
  • Simple, adaptable models for deriving quantitative guidelines for CCF woodlands

Continuous Cover Forestry is ideal for students, scholars and practitioners of forest science, forest ecology, conservation, and environmental management, as well as policymakers dealing with forestry or climate policy.

I have taught CCF in different countries (mostly the UK, Switzerland and Sweden) for more than 20 years, and from 2000 to 2011 Iwas involved in the introduction of CCF to the United Kingdom.

SLU students and staff can access the book from SLU computers using this [link].

Visiting researchers

I am delighted to receive research visitors at all levels from MSc students to senior professors. In my view visiting each other is very important for moving research forward, it is most stimulating and excellent for inspiring a good academic culture. If you have your own travelling and subsistence funding visiting me is straightforward, just let me know when you would like to come. If you need funding for the visit I can try to help with good ideas for a funding proposal. I am also happy to co-supervise and host PhD students from other universities. No fees apply at SLU, all I am asking you is to give a research seminar of 20 to 40 minutes. Short or long visits (sabbaticals) are equally fine by me and it would be great to work on a mutual publication during your visit. Assoc. Professor Mari Myllymäki from Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE), a recent visitor, commented on her experience: "I felt most welcome to join the group and greatly enjoyed my stay and the scientific discussions that led to many new research ideas that we are now following up together.”

CRANCOD - A Program for the Analysis and Reconstruction of Spatial Forest Structure

In the last few decades an impressive number of structural indices (also referred to as nearest neigbour summary statistics [NNSS]) have been developed to quantify spatial forest structure. 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 locations, species and dimensions, developed by Gadow and colleagues at Göttingen University (Germany). Especially when expressed as frequency distributions these indices offer valuable information on spatial woodland structure. Forest structure is closely correlated to and an expression of biodiversity at forest stand level (α diversity). Therefore the structural quantities used in CRANCOD play an important role as surrogate measures of biodiversity (Pommerening, 2002).

The CRANCOD program is a virtual laboratory for analysing and experimenting with nearest neighbour summary statistics and second-order characteristics. CRANCOD has been designed for use with large research plots including full enumerations of trees and in addition offers the opportunity to analyse forest inventory data consisting of multiple sample plots of circular or rectangular shape and varying plot size based on a systematic grid. The program has inbuilt flexibility with the user able to select the number of neighbour trees and to choose between six different methods of edge correction. CRANCOD can, of course, also be used to analyse research and sample plots without spatial information (stand analysis).

The integrated sampling simulator ISIS allows the simulation of sampling with systematic selection of sample plots of varying plot geometry.

Saving individual-tree results in addition to the summary files provides the opportunity to carry out individual-tree based follow-up research. A special visualisation tool allows the user to visually explore nearest neighbour summary statistics. Tree species codings and colours can be flexibly edited externally. A number of language options allow optimal adaptation of the program in different countries.

In a recent study (Pommerening and Uria-Diez, 2017)‎ we found our mingling-size hypothesis confirmed that large trees and trees growing at low local densities frequently have a tendency towards high spatial species mingling. This is often a consequence of disturbances in conjunction with Janzen-Connell effects but also of diversity-oriented forest management. MinglingMand.R‎ is the corresponding R script used in this study. In this graph you see the logistic regression curves of twelve forest stands from different parts of the world describing the probaility of high mingling and their dependence on size.

Author, copyrights and contact: Prof. Arne Pommerening (arne.pommerening@slu.se or arne.pommerening@gmail.com)

Software version: 1.4

Licenses: The core version of CRANCOD is a public domain software. However, the program is protected by intellectual property rights and users are expected to acknowledge CRANCOD and its developer when publishing results.

You can find more about the philosophy and objectives of the program along with other details including a downloadable version here.

Selected R scripts and C++ files

Some of the functionality of CRANCOD and additional methods have also been implemented in the R language and in C++. (Computation time can be significantly reduced when combining the advantages of both languages.) When using R scripts/C++ files from the list below for research purposes please acknowledge the author. Instructions on how to integrate R and C++ code are provided here.

Non-spatial analysis

  • Download the script StandAnalysis.R to calculate basal area, trees per hectare, mean diameters, height diameter regression, top height/diameter, diameter distribution and Shannon index along with the Clocaenog 6 sample data. Last updated on 06.07.2012.

Tree growth and modelling

  • Download the script BEM.R and the necessary C++ file BEM.cpp to use the stand development model by Prof. Günter Wenk and colleagues. The model is based on relative growth rates (see my publications). A short model guide will help to get used to the model. Also read Wenk (1994). The file BEMreport.Rnw will allow you to produce Latex/pdf reports of the model outputs. Find an example output here. Last updated on 25.07.2014.
  • Download the R package WenkRegression to model volume, height and diameter development of single stem analysis trees for identifying unusual growth patterns along with sample data from a Sitka spruce tree in Gwydyr forest (North Wales). Unpack the zip file and load the package in R using the package installer. A help file (invoked in R by the command help(WenkRegression)) contains all necessary details. For the modelling theory refer to Wenk (1994) and to my publications in this field. To get started use this example R file. Last updated on 02.12.2015.
  • Download the script AllometricCoefficient.R to calculate the allometric coefficient m quantifying the relationship between diameter and height growth of trees along with sample data from a Sitka spruce tree in Gwydyr forest (North Wales). There is a brief interpretation guide for your convenience. This methodology can also be applied to time series data from forest monitoring with arbitrary survey cycles. Last updated on 20.05.2013.

Diversity indices

Second-order characteristics

(Re)construction

  • Download the script Construction.R to simulate a point pattern with a user-defined value of the aggregation index by Clark and Evans (1954) along with a short documentation. Last updated on 18.01.2013.
  • Download a faster version of the script Construction.R along with the necessary C++ code. Last updated on 18.01.2013.
In Pommerening et al. (2018)‎ we found that agreement in tree marking is generally quite low in forest management compared to agreement studies in medicine. We have analysed data from 36 so-called marteloscope experiments from all over Britain and applied the Fleiss kappa characteristic. There was poor to fair agreement in crown thinning experiments (red) and fair to moderate agreement in low thinning experiments (black). Low thinnings are what most British forest managers are used to and crown thinning is a method new to them.

A selection of publications

Pommerening, A., 2002. Approaches to quantifying forest structures. Forestry 75, 305-324. [PdF file]
Pommerening, A. and Murphy, S. T., 2004. A review of the history, definitions and methods of continuous cover forestry with special attention to afforestation and restocking. Forestry. 77, 27–44. [PdF file]
Pommerening, A., 2006. Evaluating structural indices by reversing forest structural analysis. Forest Ecology and Management 224, 266–277. [PdF file]
Pommerening, A. and Stoyan, D., 2006. Edge-correction needs in estimating indices of spatial forest structure. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 36, 1723–1739. [PdF file]
Mason, W. L., Connolly, T., Pommerening, A. and Edwards, C., 2007. Spatial structure of semi-natural and plantation stands of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) in northern Scotland. Forestry 80, 567-586. [PdF file]
Pommerening, A. and Stoyan, D., 2008. Reconstructing spatial tree point patterns from nearest neighbour summary statistics measured in small subwindows. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 38, 1110–1122. [PdF file]
Pommerening, A., 2008. Analysing & modelling spatial woodland structure. Habilitation thesis BOKU University Vienna. Bangor, 145p. [PdF file]
Davies, O. and Pommerening, A., 2008. The contribution of structural indices to the modelling of Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) and birch (Betula spp.) crowns. Forest Ecology and Management 256, 68–77. [PdF file]
Crecente-Campo, F., Pommerening, A. and Rodríguez-Soalleiro, R., 2009. Impacts of thinning on structure, growth and risk of crown fire in a Pinus sylvestris L. plantation in northern Spain. Forest Ecology and Management 257, 1945-1954. [PdF file]
LeMay, V., Pommerening, A. and Marshall, P., 2009. Spatio-temporal structure of multi-storied, multi-aged interior Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var glauca) stands. Journal of Ecology 97, 1062-1074. [PdF file]
Motz, K., Sterba, H. and Pommerening, A., 2010. Sampling measures of tree diversity. Forest Ecology and Management 260, 1985–1996. [PdF file]
Murphy, S. T. and Pommerening, A., 2010. Modelling the growth of Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis (BONG.) CARR.) in Wales using Wenk's model approach. German Journal of Forest Research 181, 35-43. [PdF file]
Pommerening, A., LeMay, V. and Stoyan, D., 2011. Model-based analysis of the influence of ecological processes on forest point pattern formation - A case study. Ecological Modelling 222, 666-678. [PdF file]
Pommerening, A., Gonçalves, A. C. and Rodríguez-Soalleiro, R., 2011. Species mingling and diameter differentiation as second-order characteristics. German Journal of Forest Research 182, 115-129. [PdF file]
Gonçalves, A. C. and Pommerening, A., 2011. Spatial dynamics of cone production in Mediterranean climates: A case study of Pinus pinea L. in Portugal. Forest Ecology and Management 266, 83–93. [PdF file]
Gadow, K. v., Zhang, C. Y., Wehenkel, C., Pommerening, A., Corral-Rivas, J., Korol, M., Myklush, S., Hui, G. Y., Kiviste, A. and Zhao, X. H., 2012. Forest structure and diversity, 29 - 83. In: Pukkala, T. and Gadow, K. v. (Eds.), 2012: Continuous cover forestry. 2nd edition. Managing Forest Ecosystems 23. Springer. Dordrecht, 296p. [PdF file]
Pommerening, A. and Särkkä, A., 2013. What mark variograms tell about spatial plant interactions. Ecological Modelling. 251, 64-72. [PdF file]
Schütz, J.P. and Pommerening, A., 2013. Can Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) sustainably grow in complex forest structures? Forest Ecology and Management. 303, 175-183. [PdF file]
Lilleleht, A., Sims, A. and Pommerening, A., 2014. Spatial forest structure reconstruction as a strategy for mitigating edge-bias in circular monitoring plots. Forest Ecology and Management 316, 47-53. [PdF file]
Hui, G. and Pommerening, A., 2014. Analysing tree species and size diversity patterns in multi-species uneven-aged forests of Northern China. Forest Ecology and Management 316, 125-138. [PdF file]
Pommerening, A. and Maleki, K., 2014. Differences between competition kernels and traditional size-ratio based competition indices used in forest ecology. Forest Ecology and Management 331, 135-143. [PdF file]
Pommerening, A. and Muszta, A., 2015. Methods of modelling relative growth rate. Forest Ecosystems 2, 5. [PdF file]
Abellanas, B., Abellanas, M., Pommerening, A., Lodares, D., Cuadros, S., 2016. A forest simulation approach using weighted Voronoi diagrams. An application to Mediterranean fir Abies pinsapo Boiss stands. Forest Systems 25, e062. [PdF file]
Brzeziecki, B., Pommerening, A., Miścicki, S., Drozdowski, S. and Żybura, H., 2016. A common lack of demographic equilibrium among tree species in Białowieża National Park (NE Poland): evidence from long-term plots. Journal of Vegetation Science 27, 460-469. Doi: 10.1111/jvs.12369. [Link]
Pommerening, A., Brzeziecki, B. and Binkley, D., 2016. Are long-term changes in plant species composition related to asymmetric growth dominance in the pristine Białowieża Forest? Basic and Applied Ecology 17, 408-417. Doi: 10.1016/j.baae.2016.02.002. [Link]
Pommerening, A. and Muszta, A., 2016. Relative plant growth revisited: Towards a mathematical standardisation of separate approaches. Ecological Modelling 320, 383-392. [PdF file]
Vítková, L., Ní Dhubháin, Á and Pommerening, A., 2016. Agreement in tree marking: What is the uncertainty of human tree selection in selective forest management? Forest Science 62, 288-296. Doi: 10.5849/forsci.15-133. [PdF file]
Uria-Diez, J. and Pommerening, A., 2017. Crown plasticity in Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) as a strategy of adaptation to competition and environmental factors. Ecological Modelling 356, 117-126. [PdF file]
Pommerening, A. and Uria-Diez, J., 2017. Do large forest trees tend towards high species mingling? Ecological Informatics 42, 139-147. [Link] (R code related to this publication can be found above.)
Stoyan, D., Pommerening, A., Hummel, M. and Kopp-Schneider, A., 2018. Multiple-rater kappas for binary data: Models and interpretation. Biometrical Journal 60, 381-394. [Link]
Kuehne, C., Weiskittel, A., Pommerening, A. and Wagner, R. G., 2018. Evaluation of 10-year temporal and spatial variability in structure and growth across contrasting commercial thinning treatments in spruce-fir forests of northern Maine, USA. Annals of Forest Science 75, 20. [Link]
Pommerening, A., Pallarés Ramos, C., Kędziora, W., Haufe, J. and Stoyan, D., 2018. Rating experiments in forestry: How much agreement is there in tree marking? PLOS ONE 13, e0194747. [Link].
Pommerening, A. and Sánchez Meador, A. J., 2018. Tamm review: Tree interactions between myth and reality. Forest Ecology and Management 428, 164-176. [Link].
Pommerening, A., Zhao, Z. and Grabarnik, P., 2018. Considering allometric relationships in the analysis of spatial tree patterns. Russian Journal of Ecosystem Ecology 3, DOI 10.21685/2500-0578-2018-2-1. [Link].
Stoyan, D., Pommerening, A. and Wünsche, A., 2018. Rater classification by means of set-theoretic methods applied to forestry data. Journal of Environmental Statistics 8 (2), 1-17. [Link].
Vovides, A., Berger, U., Grueters, U., Guevara, R., Pommerening, A., Lara-Domínguez, A. L. and López-Portillo, J., 2018. Change in drivers of mangrove crown displacement along a salinity stress gradient. Functional Ecology DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.13218. [Link].
Ballani, F., Pommerening, A. and Stoyan, D., 2019. Mark-mark scatterplots improve pattern analysis in spatial plant ecology. Ecological Informatics 49, 13-21. [Link].
Häbel, H., Myllymäki, M. and Pommerening, A., 2019. New insights on the behaviour of alternative types of individual-based tree models for natural forests. Ecological Modelling 406, 23-32. [Link].
Pommerening, A., Svensson, A., Zhao, Z., Wang, H. and Myllymäki, M., 2019. Spatial species diversity in temperate species-rich forest ecosystems: Revisiting and extending the concept of spatial species mingling. Ecological Indicators 105, 116-125. [Link].
Pommerening, A. and Grabarnik, P., 2019. Individual-based methods in forest ecology and management. Springer, Cham, 411p. [Link].
Wang, H., Zhao, Z., Myllymäki, M. and Pommerening, A., 2020. Spatial size diversity in natural and planted forest ecosystems: Revisiting and extending the concept of spatial size inequality. Ecological Informatics 57, 101054. [Link].
Pommerening, A., Wang, H. and Zhao, Z., 2020. Global woodland structure from local interactions: new nearest-neighbour functions for understanding the ontogenesis of global forest structure. Forest Ecosystems 7, 22. [Link].
Pommerening, A., Brill, M., Schmidt-Kraepelin, U. and Haufe, J., 2020. Democratising forest management: Applying multiwinner approval voting to tree selection. Forest Ecology and Management 478, 118509. [Link].
Pommerening, A., Szmyt, J. and Zhang, G., 2020. A new nearest-neighbour index for monitoring spatial size diversity: The hyperbolic tangent index. Ecological Modelling 435, 109232. [Link].
Pommerening, A., Zhang, G. and Zhang, X., 2021. Unravelling the mechanisms of spatial correlation between species and size diversity in forest ecosystems. Ecological Indicators 121, 106995. [Link].
Pommerening, A., 2021. Staying on top in academia. Springer, Cham, 145p. [Link].
Pommerening, A., Gaulton, R., Magdon, P. and Myllymäki, M., 2021. CanopyShotNoise - An individual-based tree canopy modelling framework for projecting remote-sensing data and ecological sensitivity analysis. International Journal of Remote Sensing 42, 6837-6865. [Link].
Wang, H., Zhang, X., Hu, Y. and Pommerening, A., 2021. Spatial patterns of correlation between conspecific species and size diversity in forest ecosystems. Ecological Modelling 457, 109678. [Link].
Pommerening, A., Maleki, K. and Haufe, J., 2021. Tamm review: Individual-based forest management or Seeing the trees for the forest. Forest Ecology and Management 501, 119677. [Link].
Pommerening, A., Sterba, H. and West, P., 2022. Sampling theory inspires quantitative forest ecology: The story of the relascope kernel function. Ecological Modelling 467, 109924. [Link].
Hagemann, N., Magdon, P., Schnell, S. and Pommerening, A., 2022. Analysing gap dynamics in forest canopies with landscape metrics based on multi-temporal airborne laser scanning surveys A pilot study. Ecological Indicators 145, 109627.
Pommerening, A., Trincado, G., Salas-Eljatib, C. and Burkhart, H., 2023. Understanding and modelling the dynamics of data point clouds of relative growth rate and plant size. Forest Ecology and Management 529, 120652.[Link].
Kruse, L., Erefur, Ch., Westin, J., Ersson, B. T., Pommerening, A., 2023. Towards a benchmark of national training requirements for continuous cover forestry (CCF) in Sweden. Trees, Forests and People 12, 100391.[Link].
Olofsson, L., Langvall, O., Pommerening, A., 2023. Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) H. Karst.) selection forests at Siljansfors in Central Sweden. Trees, Forests and People 12, 100392.[Link].
Cracknell, D. J., Peterken, G. F., Pommerening, A., Lawrence, P. J., Healey, J. R., 2023. Neighbours matter and the weak succumb: Ash dieback infection is more severe in ash trees with fewer conspecific neighbours and lower prior growth rate. Journal of Ecology 111, 2118-2133.[Link].
Pommerening, A., 2023. Continuous cover forestry. Theories, concepts and implementation. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 419p. [Link].
Becs, A., Bergström, D., Egnell, G., Pommerening, A., 2024. How do different thinning methods influence spatial tree diversity in mixed forest stands of planted Norway spruce (Picea abies L.) and naturally regenerated birch (Betula spp.) in southern Sweden? Canadian Journal of Forest Research 00, 1-20.[Link].
Pommerening, A., Durrheim, G., Mariager Behrend, A., 2024. Rare spatio-temporal interactions between conspecific species mingling and size inequality in a diverse Afromontane forest. Forest Ecology and Management 558, 121787.[Link].
Myllymäki, M., Kuronen, M., Bianchi, S., Pommerening, A., Mehtätalo, L., 2024. A Bayesian approach to projecting forest dynamics and related uncertainty: An application to continuous cover forests. Ecological Modelling 491, 110669.[Link].

Mingling distribution of beech (Fagus sylvatica L., red) and ash (Fraxinus excelsior L., green) in the mixed species woodland Södderich 55B (near Göttingen, Germany). A common situation in woodlands managed for valuable hardwoods: Whilst dominant ash trees mostly have neighbours of different species, the dominated beech trees are arranged in conspecific clusters. The mingling index was calculated with the R script TreeDiversityIndices.R‎.
Gaussian (black) and exponential interaction kernels (red) for trees with a stem diameter at breast height of 60 cm (continuous line) and 20 cm (dashed lines). Interaction kernels are probability density functions describing how ecological processes such as growth, survival and reproduction of an individual depend on the size of and distance to other individuals. A variant of the exponential interaction kernel was applied in the shot-noise model shown at the top of this page (screenshot) and published in Pommerening et al. (2011)‎.

Additional text resources and lectures

Visitors of this website who are unfamiliar with the topic of forest structure research and forestry summary characteristics may want to read the following documents:

Feedback and cooperation

The developer of the CRANCOD software and the R scripts is particularly interested in feedback concerning any aspect of the program and of the provided listings to improve their functionality and usefulness in future versions. Please report your feedback to arne.pommerening@slu.se or arne.pommerening@gmail.com. The author is very open to any kind of cooperation, particularly in terms of joint publications. It would also be possible to maintain CRANCOD and the associated R/C++ files with an international project team in the future.

Graduate courses, seminars and external teaching

  • A free two-days distance learning beginners' course for the software R is available from my GitHub repository.
  • Scientific Computing Drop-In: Problems with R or never heard of it? Curious how you can get your calculations to run or even to automate? Interested in automated scientific reporting or in simulation? Come to my drop-in sessions in seminar room C350 (Forest Ecology & Management). Everybody is welcome. Alternatively follow my drop-in sessions remotely on GitHub.

For SLU courses please visit the SLU website. Do not hesitate to contact Arne Pommerening on arne.pommerening@slu.se or arne.pommerening@gmail.com if you are interested in any kind research cooperation or if you simply have a question.

Academic mentoring

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New: It is a simple fact that we all owe a lot to our parents, providence, to our mentors and also to sheer luck. Therefore it is not asking too much to pay back for the good we received by helping others. All academics should help others, particularly students and young researchers, by providing help and support whenever the opportunity arises. The idea is to help with independent and confidential advice on career planning, research paper planning, shaping research visions, promotions, job applications and research questions, conference attendance, proposal writing and academic conflict management outside the normal line management.

I have published a new book on academic mentoring and general research-career and mentoring advice that you find here [Link].

The pace of change in academia is ever increasing which makes it difficult for anyone to stay up to date with what may be the right long-term strategy or even the next step to take in order to master a PhD or to secure a fruitful academic career. Academic mentoring has proved to be helpful to many young researchers in difficult situations and mentoring programmes have been launched at many universities. In its most basic meaning, mentoring is a goal-oriented off-line conversation between a more experienced (mentor) and a less experienced (mentee) person with the objective to empower the mentee to make important work-related decisions. The first chapter of the book offers an introduction to academic mentoring and provides an overview of what academic mentoring entails. In the following chapters, important topics are discussed that may come up in mentoring conversations. These include scientific thinking, doctoral studies, behaviour and disappointments, scientific storytelling, teaching, scientific presentations, early career years, research cooperation, job applications and basic data management. The discussions in each of these chapters were designed with a view to provide food for thought and to invite self-reflection as well as continued discussions with peers and mentors.


The book combines an introduction to mentoring with hands-on career advice.

A group photo of the NOVA course in Scientific Programming and Simulation at Umeå in June 2017.
A group photo of the course in Applied Spatial Statistics at Umeå in October 2017.

Disclaimer

The CRANCOD software, all its libraries and algorithms, the R scripts and C++ files have been prepared with great care. However, the developer can not be made liable in the unlikely case of damage caused to your computer while using CRANCOD, the R scripts/packages and C++ files or of incorrect outputs.

Data

The data relating to the paper Stoyan et al. (2018) entitled "Rater classification by means of set-theoretic methods applied to forestry data" can be downloaded here.