The VENFOR project: wind and forest interactions from the tree scale to the landscape scale

Yves Brunet (1) , Thierry Fourcaud (2) , Alexis Achim (1) , Rex Belcher (3) , Isabelle Calmet (4) , Jean-Paul Caltagirone (5) , Helen Cleugh (6) , François de Coligny (7) , Marc Devalance (1) , Aimé Druilhet (8) , John Finnigan (6) , Hadjira Foudhil (1) , Mauricio Gamboa-Marrufo (3) , Barry Gardiner (9) , Dominique Guyon (1) , Dale Hughes (6) , Mark Irvine (1) , Eric Lamaud (1) , Michael Raupach (6) , Damien Sellier (2) , Roger H. Shaw (10) , D. Soulier (11) , Colin Wood (3) , Bin Yang (10)

1 Unité de bioclimatologie
2 LRBB - LABORATOIRE DE RHEOLOGIE DU BOIS DE BORDEAUX
3 University of Oxford
4 ECN - École Centrale de Nantes
5 MASTER-ENSCPB
6 CSIRO - Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation [Canberra]
7 Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement
8 LAERO - Laboratoire d'aérologie
9 Forestry Commission
10 UC Davis - University of California [Davis]
11 INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique

The Venfor project was set up in the aftermath of the December 1999 stroms that strongly affected European forests. Its ultimate goal is to provide tools for predicting tree motion in various turbulent fields representing the natural environment of a tree, relative to its position in a forested landscape (distance to the edge, edge shape, forest fragmentation...). The project is structured along four main directions: (1) development of a biomechanical model able to simulate instantaneous tree motion in a given turbulent environment; (2) simultaneous acquisition of mechanical and dynamical data in a homogeneous forest in order to analyse tree motion and provide a data basis for the validation of the biomechanical model; (3) experimental characterization and numerical modelling of turbulent flow in edge regions; (4) analysis of the influence of forest fragmentation on the atmospheric flow in three-dimensional landscapes, using information from wind-tunnel experiments, numerical modelling and analysis of observed damages. This international and multidisciplinary project combines in-situ measurements, wind-tunnel experiments and the development of numerical models.

Domaines: Milieux et Changements globaux

Yves Brunet, Thierry Fourcaud, Alexis Achim, Rex Belcher, Isabelle Calmet, et al.. The VENFOR project: wind and forest interactions from the tree scale to the landscape scale. Wind effect on trees, Sep 2003, Karlsruhe, Germany. ⟨hal-02763944⟩