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U.S. Department of Agriculture USDA Forest Service Southern Regional Extension Forestry Southern Regional Extension Forestry

Area Potentially Available to a Tree: A Research Tool

Accounting for competition influences on individual tree growth has been a stumbling block for many forest scientists. Partitioning the forest floor into areas potentially available (APA) to individual trees (Brown 1965) provides a useful competition index that has been overlooked or avoided. Two reasons for this are a lack of understanding of this geometric construct and its properties and inefficient methods of computation. Advances in computational geometry and forestry have made APA and similar geometric constructs practical and useful research tools in the assessment of competition. The creation and properties of these geometric models are discussed.


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Author(s): W. R. Smith

Publication: Tree Improvement and Genetics - Southern Forest Tree Improvement Conference - 1987