Estimating Canopy Structure of an Oak Forest at Several Scales

Determination of forest canopy structure at various scales is important in modelling forest ecological processes. In this paper, a non-destructive method is presented to quantify canopy structure, which was applied to the canopy of an oak stand in the Dutch coastal dunes. Description was based on counting canopy elements such as branches or clusters of leaves together with determination of element dimensions, in a sample of trees. For the whole stand, vertical distributions of area densities and average distances between elements are presented at three scales. Mean values and variances in distributions agreed well with the few other published data. The proposed method provides a basis for quantification of structural aspects of forests at various observation scales, and is not very time-consuming. Computed canopy dimensions depend strongly on the scale, which can be of strong influence when data on canopy structure are used in models of e.g. forest-atmosphere interaction.