A Study On Visualizing Management Of Natural Korean Pine Broad-leaved Forest

Forests are characterized by not only large spatial scale but also long life cycle. Forestmanagement activities is traditionally described with characters and simple two-dimensionalgraphics, which oftentimes could not properly reflect real-time forest regimes or forestmanagement activities. Traditional evaluation of the effect of forest management is based onfunction, which can not be determined before the effect is realized after a period of time.Therefore, any forest management plan approved and implemented by decision-makers willdecisively affect the growth and management of forest in an unpredictable way that will not bedetermined for many years until what is done cannot be undone.Stand visualization can display real-time forest regimes and management activities byexpressing data with graphics and figures and employing computer graphics techniques andmethods to manipulate large amounts of forest inventory data. Therefore stand visualizationcan intuitively reflect relations between data of forest and enhance the ability of foresters toanalyze forest dynamics over large spatial and temporal scales.Visualization of forest management can be realized by simulate management activitiesthrough simply clicking mouse on the computer screen, making it easy to timely adjust forestmanagement plans. Therefore, visualization of forest management will facilitate scientificmanagement of forest, shorten the time needed for forest management research, save humanand financial resources, and reduce the risk of decision-making over forest management.This study reconstructs spatial structure of natural Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis)broad-leaved forest with succession method on the basis of spatial structure analysis byWinkelmass, which is a program for analyzing spatial structure of forests. The data are from a100m by 100m plot established and investigated by the study at Forestry Experimental Area ofJilin Province located in Jiaohe City; visualize the forest and forest management with StandVisualization System (SVS) developed by Robert J. McGaughey, who is a research forester atUSDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station; and evaluate the visualizedmanagement activities according to the principle of sustainable forest management with indicesindicating scene status reflecting space utilization, species diversity, competitive status of constructive species, and species composition of the stand.The main results are as follows:1. Trees in the natural Korean pine broad-leaved forest distribute in random pattern; treesof different species are intensively and even extremely intensively mixed with eachother, showing that the degree of mixture is inversely related to relative abundance ofthe concerned species; Manchurian ash (Fraxinus mandshurica) and Manchurianwalnut (Juglans mandshurica) are obviously advantageous in the studied naturalKorean pine forest. Although the relative abundance are low, because of the existenceof large diameter trees, Korean pine and Abies holophylla share the upper storey of theforest stand with the two advantageous broad-leaved species;2. There is no significant difference between the spatial structure of the reconstructedforest and that reflected by survey data;3. The relationships between growth factors of most tree species (groups) are remarkablysignificant; tree forms are designed with SVS "Tree designer" for 11 tree species(groups) including Korean pine, Abies holophylla, Manchurian ash, Manchurianwalnut, Manchurian maple (Acer mandshurica), Acer mono, elm (Ulmus spp.), coniferspecies group, and superior, sub-superior and other broad-leaved species groups; thenatural Korean pine broad-leaved forest are visualized with SVS by employing standtables that list individual tree records and simple stand table without coordinateinformation, respectively;4. According to the principles of structure based forest management which emphasesadjusting distribution pattern, this study selects 34 trees to be cut and marks and cutsthe trees with different methods representing different real-time scenes of log cuttingon SVS "Tree marking and treatment" window.5. Evaluation shows that the intensity of thinning operation for the study is light. After thethinning operation, the forest maintains continuous coverage and no significant changehappened over distribution patterns of trees, biodiversity and diameter distribution.Thinning raises the ratio of climax conifer species and superior broad-leaved species,and therefore will contribute to restore the advantageous position of climax speciesand consolidate the superiority of Manchurian ash and Manchurian walnut. To sum up, this study innovatively designs tree forms for main species (groups) of naturalKorean pine broad-leaved forest and on this basis visualizes the stand with SVS, thus provide anew perspective to look into this important and study-focused type of natural forest; accordingto the principle of ecology that the structure of a system determines its function as well as theprinciple of sustainable forest management, targeting at cultivating healthy and stable forest,and employing the method of structure based forest management, this study visualizes themanagement of natural Korean pine broad-leaved forest with SVS through optimizing forestspatial structure in a "trial and error" manner; by evaluating the effect of forest managementwith a status-quo based index system instead of the traditional function based one, this studymakes it possible to transfer the traditional tailing after full-process control into a beforehandprioritized control, thus would promote the development of forest visualization and naturalforest management in China.