A Finite Mixture Model for Characterizing the Diameter Distributions of Mixed-Species Forest Stands

By Chuangmin Liu, Lianjun Zhang, C. J. Davis, D. S. Solomon, J. Gove. Forestry sciences, 2002

100 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A finite mixture model is used to describe the diameter distributions of mixed-species forest stands. A three-parameter Weibull function is assumed as the component probability density function in the finite mixture model. Four example plots, each with two species, are selected to demonstrate model fitting and comparison. It appears that the finite mixture model is flexible enough to fit irregular, multimodal, or highly skewed diameter distributions. Compared with traditional methods in which a single Weibull function is fit to either the whole plot or each species component separately, the finite mixture model produces much smaller root mean square error and bias, and fits the entire distribution of the plots with extreme peaks, bimodality, or heavy-tails well. In some cases, a single Weibull function fitted to individual species separately may produce more accurate estimations for the component distributions of the two species than the finite mixture model. The summation of the two independent species results, however, may not produce a better prediction for the entire plot. This study shows that the finite mixture model is a promising alternative method for modeling the diameter distribution of multispecies mixed forest stands. For. Sci. 48(4):653–661.

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e034b03b32d9d965cdbd6d02c12400cf4da77ac0

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Environmental Engineering

1. Hans Pretzsch
2. Rafal Podlaski
3. Q. V. Cao
4. Margarida Tomé
5. M. Río
6. S. Condés
7. T. Pukkala
8. Hubert Sterba

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

1. Hans Pretzsch
2. Rafal Podlaski
3. M. Río
4. S. Condés
5. T. Pukkala
6. Hubert Sterba
7. Q. V. Cao
8. Margarida Tomé

Citations in the corpus

• Fitting irregular diameter distributions of forest stands by Weibull, modified Weibull, and mixture Weibull models (2006, methodology): “1) as the common component pdf, fi(x), with different means and variances (Zhang et al. 2001; Liu et al. 2002).”
• Is the reverse J-shaped diameter distribution universally applicable in European virgin beech forests? (2006, background): “The more flexible seventh degree Weibull function, however, fits these irregularities quite well and is found to be more advantageous than unimodal functions for modeling the diameter distribution of such rotated sigmoid stands (Liu et al., 2002).”
• Characterization of diameter distribution data in near-natural forests using the Birnbaum–Saunders distribution (2008, methodology): “In addition to the test statistics, the error indexes and the graphical method (a graph of the skewness–kurtosis space) were used (Reynolds et al. 1988; Liu et al. 2002; Wang and Rennolls 2005).”
• Continuous Cover Forestry (2012, methodology): “36 K.v. Gadow et al. The Weibull model may also be used to describe the diameter distributions in forests with two dominant species (Chung 1996; Liu et al. 2002), using a mix of species-specific DBH distributions.”
• A diameter distribution model for even-aged beech in Denmark (2006, background): “Bimodal diameter distributions have been modelled by finite mixtures of various distributions (for a forestry related application, see Skovsgaard, 1997; Liu et al., 2002).”
• Characterization of the structure, dynamics, and productivity of mixed-species stands: review and perspectives (2015, methodology): “FMM was introduced by Liu et al. (2002) to characterize diameter distributions in mixed stands.”