Community organization: methods of study and prediction of the productivity and yield of forest ecosystems

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Abstract
Increasing demands for forest products and for nonproductive land uses from a diminishing forest land base will require a much improved understanding of, and ability to predict, forest productivity if all the competing needs are to be satisfied in the future. The history of forest productivity and yield studies is reviewed briefly, and the limitations of various methods of measuring forest biomass and production are discussed. Attention is drawn to the importance of understanding the allocation of net production to different biomass components, and the dynamics of small and fine roots. Three major approaches to the prediction of forest productivity and yield have developed since the beginning of the 19th century: (i) a "historical-bioassay" approach that has been used throughout the history of forest yield research; (ii) a production process approach initiated in the mid-19th century; and (iii) a more recent hybrid approach that combines the first two approaches. These three methodologies broadly reflect three different approaches to the study of production and yield; an empirically based population approach, a process-based autecological (ecophysiological) approach, and an ecosystem approach, respectively. An example of an ecosystem-level hybrid simulation model of forest production, FORCYTE-11, is described briefly.

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