Development of forest simulation tools for assessing the impact of different management strategies and climatic changes on wood production and carbon sequestration for Eucalyptus in Portugal
Doutoramento em Engenharia Florestal e dos Recursos Florestais - Instituto Superior de AgronomiaThe present work had as main objective developing tools capable of simulating the evolution
of Eucalyptus globulus forests in Portugal taking into account disturbance factors, such as
market demands, hazards occurrence, land use changes, forest management and/or climate
changes.
Some conceptual work was done concerning the definition of different forest management
alternatives while at the same time the E. globulus current management was described.
SIMPLOT, a regional simulator based on national forest inventory plots was developed and
validated. This simulation tool, mainly driven by wood and biomass demands, takes into
account the occurrence of hazards, land use changes and the changes between different
forest management alternatives allowing accessing its long-term impacts, namely on wood
production and carbon sequestration. Some of the empirical growth models available for this
species in Portugal were integrated into this simulator. However, the need to forecast the
growth of highly stocked stands managed for bioenergy lead to the development of a new
model. In order to account for climate changes, a process-based model was required.
Therefore, the applicability of 3PG process-based model at a regional scale was tested for
planted and coppice stands. Two forest level simulators, 3PG-Out+ and GLOBULUS, were
developed along this study
