Abstract

Keywords

Periodic measurements, Permanent measurements, Continuous measurements, Girth band, Dendrometer, Tree volume, Increment

Abstract

The growth of trees is a key ecological parameter of forests and thus of high importance as an indicator of forest condition in long-term forest monitoring. Forest growth can be easily and fairly inexpensively assessed on both intensive monitoring plots and large-scale plots. For intensive monitoring plots, we propose a hierarchical system of stem diameter measurements with simple manual growth assessments in regular multiannual intervals on all trees (periodic measurements), annual to weekly readings of permanently installed girth bands (permanent measurements) on a subset of trees, and electronically recorded dendrometer measurements with high-time resolution on a few selected trees (continuous measurements) for physiological measurements. For this, we describe possible plot layouts, sampling protocols for the trees, and measuring methods and instruments used, and give suggestions for data Quality Assurance, forest growth calculations, and data evaluations.

LWF Classification

Network: LWF, Category: peer-reviewed,