An estimate of the number of tropical tree species

The high species richness of tropical forests has long been recognized, yet there remains substantial uncertainty regarding the actual number of tropical tree species. Using a pantropical tree inventory database from closed canopy forests, consisting of 657,630 trees belonging to 11,371 species, we use a fitted value of Fisher’s alpha and an approximate pantropical stem total to estimate the minimum number of tropical forest tree species to fall between ∼40,000 and ∼53,000, i.e. at the high end of previous estimates. Contrary to common assumption, the Indo-Pacific region was found to be as species-rich as the Neotropics, with both regions having a minimum of ∼19,000–25,000 tree species. Continental Africa is relatively depauperate with a minimum of ∼4,500–6,000 tree species. Very few species are shared among the African, American, and the Indo-Pacific regions. We provide a methodological framework for estimating species richness in trees that may help refine species richness estimates of tree-dependent taxa

A decision support system for vine growers based on a bayesian network

We propose here a decision support system for vine growers to assess the quality of a vineyard to be planted. The quality of a vineyard is defined by the probability of possible profitability of the wine sales he is able to produce. The model, based on a Bayesian network (BN), takes into account environment and the parameters defining vineyard status with their associated interactions. BN are widely used for knowledge representation and reasoning under uncertainty in natural resource management. There is a rising interest in BN as tools for ecological and agronomic modelling. Data were collected from knowledge of vine-growing experts. We developed a C# computer program predicting the likely quality of a vineyard. The model has been validated on existing vineyards with prediction ability around 75%. This system should ease assessments of the likely impact of the choices and decisions of vine growers on the quality of new vineyards to be planted in any part of the world. No such model has been developed before for vine growers