LANDIS, a spatially explicit forest landscape of succession model incorporating fire and windthrow disturbance
Mladenoff DJ, Host GE, Crow TR. 1994. LANDIS, a spatially explicit forest landscape of succession model incorporating fire and windthrow disturbance. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. 75(2):157
LANDIS is a stochastic, spatially explicit model of forest landscape disturbance and succession for the northern Lake States. The model is raster-based and programmed in C++ using object-oriented data structures. To simulate Lake States forest dynamics, LANDIS contains interacting windthrow and fire disturbance regimes which we believe have not previously been modeled. Fire is a bottom-up disturbance in forests while windthrow is top-down, and susceptibility varies with tree age and species. We explored the dynamics of the model in simulating forest succession by varying windthrow and fire disturbances. Moderate windthrow has a greater affect on later fires than moderate fires do on windthrow. Once an area becomes dominated by a shade tolerant species (sugar maple), the predominant disturbance type (windthrow) changes age class but not species composition, since the understory becomes dominated by maple as well as the canopy. Severe fire following windthrow returns succession to aspen. Without disturbance landscapes become dominated by shade tolerant species 150 years sooner (200 vs. 350 yrs).
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Mladenoff, David; Host, George; Crow, Thomas
- Units
- SODN
- Keywords
- fire disturbance, Forest Succession, LANDIS, Modelling, windthrow