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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Climatic factors drive the annual growth of cork and the subsequent increase in its thickness, which, in addition to porosity,
determines the price of cork. Therefore, the simulation of cork thickness is a crucial module of forest growth simulators
for cork oak stands. As the existing cork growth models are independent of climatic factors, cork thickness under different
climate change scenarios could not be simulated using these models. The primary objective of this study was to develop a
climate-dependent tree model to predict annual cork growth. We also verified the hypothesis that the effects of climate change
on cork annual growth are nonlinear, and vary with the cork age and thickness. Due to the limited amount of work developed
around this topic, we evaluated three candidate models and selected the one that presented best prediction performance as the
base model. A set of climate variables that characterized annual climatic conditions were tested in the base model parameters.
The resulting climate-dependent model was referred to as the fixed-effects model, and used to initialize a mixed-effect model
which accounted for the nested structure of the data. We considered two random effects—the plot and the trees inside the
plot. Annual precipitation and the Lang index (ratio between annual precipitation and mean annual temperature) were the
variables that showed best results when included in the model parameters. Using a ratio of the variable to cork thickness
recorded during the previous year, in both cases, suggested a decline of the positive effect of annual precipitation and the
Lang index for increasing cork thickness. The models developed in this study predicted the cork thickness of individual trees
based on the cork age and under different climate change scenarios. Therefore, they can be used in forest growth simulators
for forest management and research purposes.
Description
Keywords
Quercus suber L. montado Dehesa cork ring agroforestry system decision support system
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Paulo, J.A., Firmino, P.N., Tomé, M. “A Tree- and Climate-Dependent Growth Model to Predict Mature Annual Cork Thickness under Different Climate Change Scenarios.” Modeling Earth Systems and Environment, vol. 9, no. 3, Sept. 2023, pp. 3329–42
Publisher
Springer