{"title":"Variations on the maximum density-size lines to climate and site factors for Larix spp. plantations in northeast China","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110913","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110913","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The maximum density-size line (MDSL) is a valuable tool in sustainable forest management, as it shows the relationship between site occupancy measures and mean tree size on a log-log scale. However, the responses of MDSLs to different climate and site variables still need to be clarified. Thus, this study aimed to assess the potential effects of various climate- and site-related factors on the slopes and intercepts of MDSLs for <em>Larix</em> spp. plantations in northeast China. The parameters of MDSLs were estimated using stochastic frontier regression (SFR) with three different error distribution assumptions, namely half-normal distribution (HN), exponential distribution (ED), and truncated-normal distribution (TN). Spatial distributions of maximum stand density index (<em>SDI<sub>max</sub></em>) were mapped under different climate scenarios (RCP 8.5, RCP 4.5, and RCP2.6). The results revealed that the slopes on MDSLs without covariates were significantly shallower than Reineke's slope (−1.605), ranging from −1.2485 to −1.2026. Of the 22 covariates considered, 13 variables on SFR-HN and SFR-TN and 16 variables on SFR-ED had significant influences on MDSLs. The optimal MDSL model, including mean annual temperature (MAT) and soil pH as covariates using a HN assumption, decreased the Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC) by approximately 7.76%. The results also indicated that increasing MAT significantly reduced the maximum stand density for stands with a natural logarithm of quadratic mean diameter [ln(QMD)] below 2.6, while consistent increases were observed over the entire ln(QMD) range for soil pH. Moreover, the mean <em>SDI<sub>max</sub></em> within the whole region increased significantly from 15.04% under RCP4.5 to 27.78% under RCP8.5. These findings emphasize the significant influences of climate and site conditions on the MDSL, thereby calibrating on traditional density management strategies may contribute significantly on carbon sequestration capacity of forests in the face of climate change.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51043,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Modelling","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142441642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A new cellular automata framework of urban growth modeling by incorporating land use policies and economic development zone planning","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110908","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110908","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The development of cities is frequently influenced by policies and planning. One of the significant challenges in urban cellular automata (CA) modeling research is accurately quantifying these influences in order to incorporate them reasonably into models. This study proposes a novel urban CA framework that incorporates three key elements: (1) Utilizing the results of dual evaluation of territorial space as the development suitability within the CA model, (2) Integrating the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model and affinity propagation (AP) clustering algorithm with the CA model, combined with the delineation of economic development zones, to achieve synchronous simulation of multimodal urban growth, (3) Conducting multi-scenario predictions in conjunction with farmland and ecological protection policies to identify the degree of coordination and conflict areas among various policies. The framework assesses the influence of land use policies and economic development zone planning on prospective urban growth. It is capable of simulating enclave-style growth urban growth, thereby extending its utility in practical applications. Taking Wuhan as a case study, we employ the proposed CA framework to forecast the urban spatial pattern in 2035. This can provide a scientific basis for the formulation and improvement of future policies and planning in Wuhan, thereby contributing to informed decision-making and sustainable urban development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51043,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Modelling","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142441641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Towards a liana plant functional type for vegetation models","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110901","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110901","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Lianas (woody climbers) are crucial components of tropical forests and they have been increasingly recognized to have profound effects on tropical forest carbon dynamics. Despite their importance, lianas' representation in vegetation models remains limited, partly due to the complexity of liana-tree dynamics and the diversity in liana life history strategies. This paper provides a comprehensive review of advances and challenges for mechanistically representing lianas in forest ecosystem models and a proposed path towards effectively representing lianas in these models.</div><div>Defining a liana plant functional type is a significant challenge because of the high morphological and physiological diversity amongst liana species, and because of their structural association with trees. Here, we identify critical liana traits that likely should contribute to establishing a liana plant functional type, along with key processes to properly represent lianas in ecosystem models. Subsequently, we discuss a variety of possible liana implementation strategies with their associated strengths, limitations, computational costs and data requirements. A fundamental redesign of the tree-centric demographic vegetation models seems appropriate to accommodate the unique growth and competition strategies of lianas. We illustrate the potential of such models with a single-site case study where we disentangle putative mechanisms of liana increasing abundance. Furthermore, we underscore the critical need for comprehensive liana demographic and functional data (including long-term, physiological, and pantropical observations) for the qualitative implementation and evaluation in the proposed modeling efforts. Currently, there is a scarcity of liana data and the data that do exist have a neotropical bias. We finally introduce a new liana functional trait database that can centralize existing liana trait data, incentivize improved data gathering and thus facilitate model development and scientific analyses.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51043,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Modelling","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142433067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Identifying optimal cloud cover for enhanced forest carbon uptake: Periodic-case NEE-overshoot modelling","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110904","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110904","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>On certain kinds of cloudy days, many forested ecosystems exhibit enhanced carbon uptake and water-use efficiency-the cloudy-day forest flux anomaly. Using ensemble methods to analyze eddy-covariance fluxes, we have diagnosed net ecosystem exchange (<em>NEE</em>) and water-use efficiency (<em>WUE</em>) of a temperate broadleaf forest and a tropical evergreen forest as they responded to natural fluctuating-light regimes. Here we apply average <em>NEE</em> and evapotranspiration solutions of a first-order dynamic model to describe the observed whole-canopy sensitivity to periodic light. On partly-cloudy days, maximum overall <em>NEE</em> enhancements over conventional steady-state equilibrium estimates are ≈ 25% for a midlatitude deciduous forest and ≈ 15% for a tropical evergreen forest. This finding supports our conclusion that in many cases the cloudy-day anomaly is a consequence of a dynamic response by the trees responding to fluctuating-light regimes occasioned by passing cumulus clouds.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51043,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Modelling","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142421318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring the optimal fuzzy rule-based modeling procedure to assess habitat suitability of indicator Collembola species in forest soils","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110903","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110903","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the face of escalating anthropogenic fragmentation and habitat destruction, research on soil habitat disturbance using indicator species is increasingly critical to conserve and maintain the ecological functions of forest ecosystems. The modeling methodology for habitat suitability is a valuable tool for assessing habitat conditions based on the ecological preferences of indicator species; however, its application to such species in forest soils remains unexplored. Therefore, this study aimed to fill this gap by identifying an optimal procedure for developing a fuzzy model to evaluate the habitat suitability of indicator species based on their abundance classes. Fuzzy models were developed for assessing the habitat suitability of <em>Folsomia quadrioculata</em> and <em>F. octoculata</em> based on data collected from seven mountains using three types of selected variable numbers (3-, 4-, and 5-variable) for two input variable selection methods (statistics-based variable selection, SVS; knowledge-based variable selection, KVS), and their performance was compared. Our results indicate that the SVS-fuzzy model performed better than the KVS-fuzzy model in both the model training and testing phases. As the number of input variables increased, the performance of the KVS-fuzzy model improved; however, it still exhibited lower performance compared to the SVS-fuzzy model. Meanwhile, the optimal SVS-fuzzy model effectively explained the abundance classes of the two collembolan species based on the environmental conditions of their habitats (F1 score > 0.743, Matthews correlation coefficient > 0.520). The findings of this study provide a solid foundation for developing effective models to understand the habitat suitability of soil indicator species. Expanding the application of fuzzy modeling to diverse species in forest soils will improve our understanding of habitat disturbance and degradation, contributing to the development of conservation strategies for forest ecosystems.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51043,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Modelling","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142421317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Increase in young forests, more than climate change may accelerate future colonization of temperate tree species in mixedwood boreal stands","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110892","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110892","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Temperate hardwood tree species may take advantage of climate change to migrate northward tracking their optimal growth and survival niches. Other factors than climate could constrain or facilitate their establishment north of their actual range, such as competitive interactions, their ability to disperse, and forest management. The objectives of this study were to model the ability of temperate tree species to colonize boreal mixedwood stands of Eastern Canada from a few temperate tree seeders, considering the effects of climate change, competitive interactions, and specific successional stages of the receiving stands. We used the individual based forest model SORTIE-ND with adult growth forced by four different projected climate change scenarios. To mimic the natural colonization of temperate trees from marginal populations eventually established by long-distance migration, we replaced a patch in the center of the simulated stands with temperate tree species, i.e., red maple, sugar maple or yellow birch. We then performed a sensitivity analysis on the parameters determining the growth, dispersal, and mortality of temperate tree species to determine which of these processes was critical to their expansion. All three temperate tree species were able to colonize the boreal stands with higher performance in younger stands, and greater colonization skills for yellow birch. At the 2100 horizon, the impact of the climate scenarios on the final basal area of temperate tree species was minor. Processes mostly driven by competition and species auto-ecology, including dispersion, mortality, and juvenile growth parameters, were the most important for the colonization capacity. Our results suggest that the expansion of temperate tree species from already established northern marginal populations would be minimally affected by climate change, and that forest management could have a more significant impact by rejuvenating boreal mixedwood landscapes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51043,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Modelling","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142420872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Models vetted against prediction error and parameter sensitivity standards can credibly evaluate ecosystem management options","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110900","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110900","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A new standard for assessing model credibility is developed. This standard consists of parameter estimation, prediction error assessment, and a parameter sensitivity analysis that is driven by outside individuals who are skeptical of the model’s credibility (hereafter, <em>skeptics</em>). Ecological/environmental models that have a one-step-ahead prediction error rate that is better than naive forecasting — and are not excessively sensitive to small changes in their parameter values are said here to be <em>vetted</em>. A procedure is described that can perform this assessment on any model being evaluated for possible participation in an ecosystem management decision. Uncertainty surrounding the model’s ability to predict future values of its output variables and in the estimates of all of its parameters should be part of any effort to vett a model. The vetting procedure described herein, Prediction Error Rate-Deterministic Sensitivity Analysis (PER-DSA), incorporates these two aspects of model uncertainty. DSA in particular, requires participation by skeptics and is the reason why a successful DSA gives a model sufficient credibility to have a voice in ecosystem management decision making. But these models need to be stochastic and represent the mechanistic processes of the system being modeled. For such models, performing a PER-DSA can be computationally expensive. A cluster computing algorithm to speed-up these computations is described as one way to answer this challenge. This new standard is illustrated through a PER-DSA of a population dynamics model of South African rhinoceros (<em>Ceratotherium simum simum</em>).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51043,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Modelling","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142420871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An individual-based model for exploration of population and stock dynamics in marine fishes","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110842","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110842","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Many size- or age-structure fisheries models require estimation of fundamental population level parameters such as growth, mortality, and recruitment rates that are notoriously difficult to estimate and can constrain the ability of models for exploring emergent properties in population dynamics. To address some of these issues, we develop a discrete-time individual-based model that integrates both age- and size-based concepts. Individual fish are tracked throughout their lifetime allowing for assessment of age-based concepts, with traits determined by size. This method utilizes individual growth parameters as opposed to population level growth rates and allows for many properties of populations that are normally prescribed to be emergent properties of the model. We demonstrate the utility of the model for reproducing population level parameters such as slope at origin for recruitment curves and intrinsic growth rates. The addition of spatial dynamics where a population is sub-divided into discrete stocks further allows for the assessment of various conservation techniques such as marine protected areas, fishing area rotation, and size limits at the individual level.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51043,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Modelling","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142420870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Building ecosystem services-based ecological networks in energy and chemical industry areas","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110897","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110897","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The massive utilization of fossil energy by humans has promoted socio-economic development. However, it has also generated severe regional eco-environmental problems, including water shortage, soil erosion, and land desertification. An optimal ecological-network-based regulation of eco-environmentally damaged areas is necessary to balance economic development with rigid eco-environmental constraints in pursuit of sustainable regional development. Using remote-sensing, meteorology, land use, and soil data of energy and chemical industrial areas in the mid-upper reaches of the Yellow River, we quantitatively evaluated the related ecosystem services (ESs) by applying InVEST, CASA, and RWEQ models. Additionally, we constructed ecological conservation networks comprising ecological source areas, resistance surface, corridors, and nodes. The results are as follows. First, from 2000 to 2020, the areas of cultivated and unused land decreased, but those of forest, grassland, water bodies, and construction land increased. Regarding spatial distribution, the proportion of grassland was the highest, followed by unused land, and other types of land accounting for a relatively low proportion. Second, from 2000 to 2020, all ESs and the overall ecosystem improved. However, ESs demonstrated a clear spatial heterogeneity (i.e., better in the southeast than in the northwest). Third, comparing the two ecological networks constructed by minimum cumulative resistance (MCR) and circuit models, the MCR-based ecological network was considered better because of its higher ε, θ, and σ values. Robustness analysis also showed that the MCR-based ecological network was more stable. Finally, ecological source areas of 110,300 km<sup>2</sup> were obtained, accounting for 21.69 % of the study region. Ecological resistance was relatively high in desert areas, which are to the northwest of the study region, and relatively low in the southeast. Fifty-nine ecological corridors (including 31 important ones) and 22 ecological nodes were extracted. The finalized ecological network was diamond-shaped, with the ecological source areas in four directions (i.e., east, south, west, and north) of the study region being closely connected. To promote the spatial optimization of the study region, appropriate measures (e.g., afforestation and soil improvement) must be taken to reduce regional imbalance in ecological condition, improve ecosystem functions and landscape connectivity, reduce various resistance, and ultimately promote conservation outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51043,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Modelling","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142420869","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Model-based experiments as epistemic evidence in paleoecology","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110895","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2024.110895","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Where ordinary experiments are impossible and observational data scarce and indirect<!--> <!-->—<!--> <!-->particularly in paleoecosystems<!--> <!-->—<!--> <!-->computational experiments are often our only means to learn about reality. There are good arguments to count such model-based predictions as evidence, testing hypotheses and updating our beliefs about the world. However, the epistemic weight of computational experiments depends on an adequate model representation of the target system, transparency about predictive uncertainty, and the avoidance of confirmation bias. I argue that mechanistic models are particularly suited for paleoecological predictions but that iterative uncertainty analyses should guide their development. Using a Bayesian framework I propose preregistration and blinded analysis as tools to strengthen the epistemic value of computational experiments. Here, a preregistration marks the boundary between exploratory model development, which establishes credence in the model, and predictive model application, which tests hypotheses. As good modeling practice I suggest clarifying epistemic goals at the outset of a project and accordingly choose methods to maximize the epistemic weight of the computational experiment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51043,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Modelling","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142420868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}