Abstract
In this article, we present equations derived for the prediction of the aboveground tree volume and phytomass for twenty-five of the most important forest species growing in Italy. These equations result from ongoing research aiming to fill a gap in the models available at the national scale. With regard to volume, the results are particularly important for thirteen species or groups of species that were once scaled with models, conventionally assumed as reference models, available for other species. In Italy, phytomass models had never been constructed at the national level before. For any single tree, specific equations allow estimations of the following tree components to be made: stem and large branches (for either volume or phytomass), small branches (phytomass), stump (phytomass) and the whole tree phytomass. The models have been constructed on the basis of nearly 1,300 sampling units (sample trees). Although these equations must be considered intermediate results of the ongoing research because only half the scheduled number of samples has been collected, they have already been used in the practice, for example in the estimates reported in the recently published second national forest inventory.
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Notes
Riselvitalia Programme 2001–2003, Research topic 4.1.6—prediction models for biomass and carbon stock estimates for Italian forest ecosystems.
This study considered the most important or widespread species in Italy individually but grouped the others according to the genus or other common characteristics. To simplify the writing we will refer only to species, avoiding the wording “species and/or group of species” hereinafter in the text. Details about the grouping of species are given in full in Table 3.
In literature several empirical rules can be found for establishing the minimum sample size for regression analysis (Garson 2008). The number of forty sampling units was stated in one of the most simple among them, suggesting a number of observations at least twenty times that of the independent variables.
In Fattorini et al. (2005) two distinct prediction equations have been constructed for the small branch phytomass, the first for living and the second for dead twigs. In our case, although these two components were kept separate during the field work, a single, undifferentiated prediction equation was constructed, using the whole dataset.
The standard error of the estimates in the table refers to the transformed values (weighted).
Analysis of residuals has been performed only on volume and total aboveground phytomass equations since at this stage the research has focussed mainly on these two independent variables.
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Acknowledgments
This study has been carried out within the Research Programme RISELV.ITALIA (Topic 4.1.6) financed by the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies. The authors wish to thank Stefano Morelli, Michela Nocetti, Giuseppe Farruggia, Enzo Andriani and Sandro Zanotelli for the laboratory works and the data entry.
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Communicated by T. Seifert.
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Tabacchi, G., Di Cosmo, L. & Gasparini, P. Aboveground tree volume and phytomass prediction equations for forest species in Italy. Eur J Forest Res 130, 911–934 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-011-0481-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-011-0481-9