Building virtual forest landscapes to support forest management: the challenge of parameterization - Supporting Data

This repository holds data for following research article: Mina M, Marzini S, Crespi A & Albrich K (2025) Building virtual forest landscapes to support forest management: the challenge of parameterization. Forests Monitor 2(1), 49-96,  https://doi.org/10.62320/fm.v2i1.19

The archived data consist in input files for the iLand model (version 2.0) for the Venosta study area. The dataset includes: biophysical parameters, historical climate database, digital elevation model, wind topomodifier map, forest cover area, forest landscape snapshot, and project file. 

For further information on setting up the iLand model in a landscape visit https://iland-model.org/iland-book. iLand is freely available research tool for non-commercial use. The model is fully documented in the iLand webpage and released under the GNU General Public License. The source code is open access and available in this Github repository. 

If interested in using iLand with this associated dataset for a research study or a project, please contact Marco Mina (marco.mina@eurac.edu)

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Research article associated to this dataset

Mina M, Marzini S, Crespi A & Albrich K (2025) Building virtual forest landscapes to support forest management: the challenge of parameterization. Forests Monitor r 2(1), 49-96, https://doi.org/10.62320/fm.v2i1.19

ABSTRACT. Simulation models are important tools to study the impacts of climate change and natural disturb-ances on forest ecosystems. Being able to track tree demographic processes in a spatially explicit manner, process-based forest landscape models are considered the most suitable to provide robust projections that can aid decision making in forest management. However, landscape models are challenging to parameterize and setting up new study areas for application studies largely depends on data availability. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the parameterization process, including model testing and evaluation, for setting up a study area in the Italian Alps in a process-based forest landscape model using available data. We processed soil, climate, carbon pools, vegetation, disturb-ances and forest management data, and ran iterative spin-up simulations to generate a virtual landscape best resembling current conditions. Our results demonstrated the feasibility of initializing forest landscape models with data that are typically available from forest management plans and national forest inventories, as well as openly available mapping products. Evaluation tests proved the ability of the model to capture the environmental constraints driving regeneration dynamics and in-ter-specific competition in forests of the Italian Alps, as well as to simulate natural disturbances and carbon dynamics. The model can subsequently be applied to investigate forest landscape develop-ment under a suite of future scenarios and provide recommendations for adapting forest management decisions.