Modeling of light transmission under heterogeneous forest canopy: model description and validation

David da Silva (1) , Philippe Balandier (2, 3) , Frédéric Boudon (1, 4) , André Marquier (3) , Christophe Pradal (1, 4) , Christophe Godin (1, 4) , Hervé Sinoquet (3)

1 VIRTUAL PLANTS - Modeling plant morphogenesis at different scales, from genes to phenotype
2 UR EFNO - Écosystèmes forestiers
3 PIAF - Laboratoire de Physique et Physiologie Intégratives de l'Arbre Fruitier et Forestier
4 UMR DAP - Développement et amélioration des plantes

Growth and survival of regeneration saplings and understorey vegetation development is closely related to light available below the forest trees. Manipulating the forest structure by thinning adult trees is a major tool to control light transmission to the understorey. The transmission is related to the attenuation of light which is usually estimated with the Beer-Lambert law assuming homogeneous foliage within the canopy. However forest canopies are far from homogeneous, which requires models that can take into account the effect of clumping between and within trees. In this work we present a model that can be readily used with both coarse or detailed parameterization to generate any type of stand and compute the distribution of light transmitted below the canopy. To evaluate the accuracy of the model, we compared model results with field measurements from several stands of Pinus sylvestris L. in the French Massif Central.

no abstract

Mots clés: TRANSMITTANCE

Mots clés: PIN

Domaines: Modélisation et simulation

David da Silva, Philippe Balandier, Frédéric Boudon, André Marquier, Christophe Pradal, et al.. Modeling of light transmission under heterogeneous forest canopy: model description and validation. 5th International Workshop on Functional-Structural Plant Models, 2007, Napier, New Zealand. pp.58, 1--4. ⟨hal-00831822⟩