A tree survival model with application to species of the Great Lakes region

Abstract

The survival model presented relates survival to tree size and vigor. Biological principles establish the general model form. The mathematical descriptor presented follows these biological principles with sufficient flexibility to portray the particular survival behavior of each species. Coefficients are presented for five major Great Lakes species. Although there were thousands of trees available for determining the coefficients for each species, each data set was deficient in large, slow-growing trees. Each set was augmented to guide the model in this range of size and growth. Applying the model to five species demonstrates the flexibility of its mathematical form. The model\u27s performance is well established for the range of conditions underlying the test data